661,604 research outputs found
Suit the action to the word, the word to the action: Hypothetical choices and real decisions in Medicare Part D
In recent years, consumer choice has become an important element of public policy. One reason is that consumers differ in their tastes and needs, which they can express most easily through their own choices. Elements that strengthen consumer choice feature prominently in the design of public insurance markets, for instance in the United States in the recent introduction of prescription drug coverage for older individuals via Medicare Part D. For policy makers who design such a market, an important practical question in the design phase of such a new program
is how to deduce enrollment and plan selection preferences prior to its introduction. In this paper, we investigate whether hypothetical choice experiments can serve as a tool in this process. We combine data from hypothetical and real plan choices, elicited around the time of the introduction of Medicare Part D. We first analyze how well the hypothetical choice data predict willingness to pay and market shares at the aggregate level. We then analyze predictions at the individual level, in particular how insurance demand varies with observable characteristics. We also explore whether the extent of adverse selection can be predicted using hypothetical choice data alone
A practical fpt algorithm for Flow Decomposition and transcript assembly
The Flow Decomposition problem, which asks for the smallest set of weighted
paths that "covers" a flow on a DAG, has recently been used as an important
computational step in transcript assembly. We prove the problem is in FPT when
parameterized by the number of paths by giving a practical linear fpt
algorithm. Further, we implement and engineer a Flow Decomposition solver based
on this algorithm, and evaluate its performance on RNA-sequence data.
Crucially, our solver finds exact solutions while achieving runtimes
competitive with a state-of-the-art heuristic. Finally, we contextualize our
design choices with two hardness results related to preprocessing and weight
recovery. Specifically, -Flow Decomposition does not admit polynomial
kernels under standard complexity assumptions, and the related problem of
assigning (known) weights to a given set of paths is NP-hard.Comment: Introduces software package Toboggan: Version 1.0.
http://dx.doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.82163
Health Insurance and Life Style Choices: Identifying the Ex Ante Moral Hazard
There is extensive debate in the literature about the practical significance of the concept of ex-ante moral hazard. This paper uses data from the 1999-2003 PSID waves to estimate a structural model of individual choice of insurance coverage and four life style related decisions: heavy smoking, heavy drinking, sedentarism and obesity. The results show that health insurance has significant incentive effects on life style choices, increasing the propensity to heavy smoking, sedentarism and obesity. Somewhat surprisingly, however, health insurance decreases the propensity to heavy drinking. There is also significant correlation among the errors of each equation. The results might also have implications for the design of health financing policies.Ex ante moral hazard ; Insurance ; Life Style ; Max Simulated Likelihood
Understanding student learning pathways in traditional online history courses: utilizing process mining analysis on clickstream data
Purpose
This study explores ongoing research into self-mapped learning pathways that students utilize to move through a course when given two modalities to choose from: one that is instructor-led and one that is student-directed. Design/methodology/approach
Process mining analysis was utilized to examine and cluster clickstream data from an online college-level History course designed with dual modality choices. This paper examines some of the results from different approaches to clustering the available data. Findings
By examining how often students interacted with others, whether they were more internal or external facing with their pathway choices, and whether or not they completed a learning pathway, this study identified five general tactics from the data: Individualistic Internal; Non-completing Internal; Completing, Interactive Internal; Completing, Interactive, and Reflective and Completing External. Further analysis of when students used each tactic led to the identification of four different strategies that learners utilized during class sessions. Practical implications
The results of this analysis could potentially lead to the creation of customizable design models that can assist learners as they navigate modality choices in learner-centered or less-structured learning design methodologies. Originality/value
Few courses are designed to give the learners the options to follow the instructor or create their own learning pathway. Knowing how to identify what choices a learner might take in these scenarios is even less explored. Preliminary data for this paper was originally presented as a poster session at the Learning Analytics and Knowledge conference in 2019
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Digital entrepreneurship in a resource-scarce context: A focus on entrepreneurial digital competencies
Purpose – Thepurpose of this paper is to criticallyexplorehow context asan antecedent to entrepreneurial digital competencies (EDCs) influences digital entrepreneurship in a resource-scarce environment.
Design/methodology/approach – The data comprises semi-structured interviews with 16 digital entrepreneurs, as owner-managers of small digital businesses in Cameroon.
Findings – The results reveal the ways in which EDCs shape the entry (or start-up) choices and post-entry strategic decisions of digital entrepreneurs in response to context-specific opportunities and challenges associated with digital entrepreneurship.
Research limitations/implications – The data comes from one African country and 16 digital businesses thus the research setting limits the generalisability of the results.
Practical implications – This paper highlights important implications for encouraging digital entrepreneurship by focussing on institutional, technology and local dimensions of context and measures to develop the entrepreneurial and digital competencies. This includes policy interventions to develop the information and communication technology (ICT) infrastructure, transport and local distribution infrastructure, and training opportunities to develop the EDCs of digital entrepreneurs.
Originality/value – Whereas the capabilities to adopt and use ICTs and the internet by small businesses have been examined, this is among the first theoretically sensitised study linking context, EDCs and digital entrepreneurship
What Is the Best Reference RNA? And Other Questions Regarding the Design and Analysis of Two-Color Microarray Experiments
The reference design is a practical and popular choice for microarray studies using two-color platforms. In the reference design, the reference RNA uses half of all array resources, leading investigators to ask: What is the best reference RNA? We propose a novel method for evaluating reference RNAs and present the results of an experiment that was specially designed to evaluate three common choices of reference RNA. We found no compelling evidence in favor of any particular reference. In particular, a commercial reference showed no advantage in our data. Our experimental design also enabled a new way to test the effectiveness of pre-processing methods for two-color arrays. Our results favor using an intensity-normalization and foregoing background-subtraction. Finally, we evaluate the sensitivity and specificity of data quality filters, and propose a new filter that can be applied to any experimental design and does not rely on replicate hybridizations
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