The processes of reform in Victoria’s alcohol and other drug sector, 2011-2014

This paper explores issues and concerns related to the 2014 alcohol and other drug sector recommissioning process in Victoria. Overview In mid-2014, the Victorian Alcohol and Drug Association approached the Drug Policy Modelling Program, at the National Drug and Alcohol Research Centre, University of New South Wales to undertake a project exploring and describing issues and concerns related to the 2014 alcohol and other drug sector recommissioning process in Victoria. This project commenced in July 2014 and concluded in November 2014. Policy documents and allied material were reviewed, and 20 stakeholders from 18 alcohol and other drug sector organisations were consulted. These stakeholders were CEOs/senior managers during the reform period

Statistical models for market segmentation

It is an essential element of market research that customer preferences are considered and the heterogeneity of these preferences is recognized. By segmenting the market into homogeneous clusters the preferences of customers is addressed. Latent class methodology for conjoint analysis, proposed by Green (2000), is one of the several conjoint segmentation procedures that overcome the limitations of aggregate analysis and priori segmentation. This approach proposes the proportional odds model as a proper statistical model for ordinal categorical data in which the item attributes are included in the linear predictor. The likelihood is maximized through the EM algorithm. This paper considers two extensions of this methodology that incorporate individual characteristics into the models.peer-reviewe

The "Dobrescu Macromodel" of the Romanian Market Economy - 2005 Version - Yearly Forecast – Summer Forecast for 2010

The macromodel estimates the short and medium-term economic implications for internal policies and changes in the international context. This version of the Romanian macromodel incorporates the experience accumulated through the utilization of its previous forms - either experimental (tested during 1991-1995) or operational (developed during 1996-2003). At the same time, it introduces some methodological and informational improvements. The most significant of them is the structural decomposition of the economy, associated with input-output techniques. Due to the relatively advanced stage of the transitional processes in Romania, the behavioural functions were accommodated - as much as possible - to the standard relationships. Unlike the versions that used the statistical series beginning in 1980, the present one is based exclusively on information concerning the period 1989-2004. Therefore, we have considered more adequately naming this variant the macromodel of the Romanian market (not transition, as before) economy. In this article we present the Summer forecast for 2010 (May estimations).model, input-output analysis, econometric relationships, simulations

The Dobrescu Macromodel of the Romanian Market Economy – 2005 Version Yearly Forecast Spring Forecast 2011, March Estimate

The macromodel estimates the short and medium-term economic implications for internal policies and changes in the international context. This version of the Romanian macromodel incorporates the experience accumulated through the utilization of its previous forms - either experimental (tested during 1991-1995) or operational (developed during 1996-2003). At the same time, it introduces some methodological and information improvements. The most significant is the structural decomposition of the economy, associated with input-output techniques. Due to the relatively advanced stage of the transitional processes in Romania, the behavioral functions were accommodated - as much as possible - to the standard relationships. Unlike the versions that used the statistical series beginning in 1980, the present one is based exclusively on information concerning the period 1989-2004. Therefore, we have considered more adequately naming this variant the macromodel of the Romanian market (not transition, as before) economy. In this article we present the Spring forecast for 2011.model, input-output analysis, econometric relationships, simulations

The "Dobrescu Macromodel" Of The Romanian Market Economy - 2005 Version Yearly Forecast - Spring Forecast 2010

The macromodel estimates the short and medium-term economic implications for internal policies and changes in the international context. This version of the Romanian macromodel incorporates the experience accumulated through the utilization of its previous forms - either experimental (tested during 1991-1995) or operational (developed during 1996-2003). At the same time, it introduces some methodological and information improvements. The most significant of them is the structural decomposition of the economy, associated with input-output techniques. Due to the relatively advanced stage of the transitional processes in Romania, the behavioral functions were accommodated - as much as possible - to the standard relationships. Unlike the versions that used the statistical series beginning in 1980, the present one is based exclusively on information concerning the period 1989-2004. Therefore, we have considered more adequately naming this variant the macromodel of the Romanian market (not transition, as before) economy. In this article we present the Spring Forecast for 2010.model, input-output analysis, econometric relationships, simulations

The "Dobrescu Macromodel" of the Romanian Market Economy - 2005 Version - Yearly Forecast – Autumn Forecast for 2010

The macromodel estimates the short and medium-term economic implications of the internal policies and the international environment. This version of the Romanian macromodel incorporates the experience accumulated through the utilisation of its previous forms - either experimental (tested during 1991-1995) or operational (developed during 1996-2003). At the same time, it introduces some methodological and informational improvements. The most significant of them is the structural decomposition of the economy, associated with input-output techniques. Due to the relatively advanced stage of the transitional processes in Romania, the behavioural functions were accommodated - as much as possible - to the standard relationships. Unlike the versions that used the statistical series beginning in 1980, the present one is based exclusively on information concerning the period 1989-2004. Therefore, we have considered more adequately naming this variant the macromodel of the Romanian market (not transition, as before) economy. In this article, we present the Autumn forecast for 2010 (August estimates).model, input-output analysis, econometric relationships, simulations

The "Dobrescu Macromodel" of the Romanian Market Economy - 2005 Version - Yearly Forecast – Autumn Forecast 2011, September Estimate

The macromodel estimates the short and medium-term economic implications for internal policies and changes in the international context. This version of the Romanian macromodel incorporates the experience accumulated through the utilization of its previous forms - either experimental (tested during 1991-1995) or operational (developed during 1996-2003). At the same time, it introduces some methodological and information improvements. The most significant is the structural decomposition of the economy, associated with input-output techniques. Due to the relatively advanced stage of the transitional processes in Romania, the behavioral functions were accommodated - as much as possible - to the standard relationships. Unlike the versions that used the statistical series beginning in 1980, the present one is based exclusively on information concerning the period 1989-2004. Therefore, we have considered more adequately naming this variant the macromodel of the Romanian market (not transition, as before) economy. In this article we present the Autumn forecast for 2011.model, input-output analysis, econometric relationships, simulations

The "Dobrescu Macromodel" of the Romanian Market Economy - 2005 Version - Yearly Forecast – Summer Forecast 2011, June Estimate

The macromodel estimates the short and medium-term economic implications for internal policies and changes in the international context. This version of the Romanian macromodel incorporates the experience accumulated through the utilization of its previous forms - either experimental (tested during 1991-1995) or operational (developed during 1996-2003). At the same time, it introduces some methodological and information improvements. The most significant is the structural decomposition of the economy, associated with input-output techniques. Due to the relatively advanced stage of the transitional processes in Romania, the behavioral functions were accommodated - as much as possible - to the standard relationships. Unlike the versions that used the statistical series beginning in 1980, the present one is based exclusively on information concerning the period 1989-2004. Therefore, we have considered more adequately naming this variant the macromodel of the Romanian market (not transition, as before) economy. In this article we present the Summer forecast for 2011.model, input-output analysis, econometric relationships, simulations

Semi-Supervised Kernel PCA

We present three generalisations of Kernel Principal Components Analysis (KPCA) which incorporate knowledge of the class labels of a subset of the data points. The first, MV-KPCA, penalises within class variances similar to Fisher discriminant analysis. The second, LSKPCA is a hybrid of least squares regression and kernel PCA. The final LR-KPCA is an iteratively reweighted version of the previous which achieves a sigmoid loss function on the labeled points. We provide a theoretical risk bound as well as illustrative experiments on real and toy data sets