The Development of Long-Term Care in Post-Socialist Member States of the EU

Long-term care (LTC) in the new EU member states, which used to belong to the former socialist countries, is not yet a legally separated sector of social security. However, the ageing dynamics are more intensive in these states than in the old EU member states. This paper analyses the process of creating an LTC sector in the context of institutional reforms of social protection systems during the transition period. The authors explain LTC’s position straddling the health and social sectors, the underdevelopment of formal LTC, and the current policies regarding the risk of LTC dependency. The paper is based mainly on the analysis of information provided by country experts in the ANCIEN project

Liquidity Effects of Trading Frequency

In this article, we present a discrete time modeling framework, in which the shape and dynamics of a Limit Order Book (LOB) arise endogenously from an equilibrium between multiple market participants (agents). We use the proposed modeling framework to analyze the effects of trading frequency on market liquidity in a very general setting. In particular, we demonstrate the dual effect of high trading frequency. On the one hand, the higher frequency increases market efficiency, if the agents choose to provide liquidity in equilibrium. On the other hand, it also makes markets more fragile, in the sense that the agents choose to provide liquidity in equilibrium only if they are market-neutral (i.e., their beliefs satisfy certain martingale property). Even a very small deviation from market-neutrality may cause the agents to stop providing liquidity, if the trading frequency is sufficiently high, which represents an endogenous liquidity crisis (aka flash crash) in the market. This framework enables us to provide more insight into how such a liquidity crisis unfolds, connecting it to the so-called adverse selection effect.Comment: Accepted in Mathematical Financ

A Developmental Systems Account of Human Nature

It is now widely accepted that a scientifically credible conception of human nature must reject the folkbiological idea of a fixed, inner essence that makes us human. We argue here that to understand human nature is to understand the plastic process of human development and the diversity it produces. Drawing on the framework of developmental systems theory and the idea of developmental niche construction we argue that human nature is not embodied in only one input to development, such as the genome, and that it should not be confined to universal or typical human characteristics. Both similarities and certain classes of differences are explained by a human developmental system that reaches well out into the 'environment'. We point to a significant overlap between our account and the ‘Life History Trait Cluster’ account of Grant Ramsey, and defend the developmental systems account against the accusation that trying to encompass developmental plasticity and human diversity leads to an unmanageably complex account of human nature

Limit value for optimal control with general means

We consider optimal control problem with an integral cost which is a mean of a given function. As a particular case, the cost concerned is the Ces\`aro average. The limit of the value with Ces\`aro mean when the horizon tends to infinity is widely studied in the literature. We address the more general question of the existence of a limit when the averaging parameter converges, for values defined with means of general types. We consider a given function and a family of costs defined as the mean of the function with respect to a family of probability measures -- the evaluations -- on R_+. We provide conditions on the evaluations in order to obtain the uniform convergence of the associated value function (when the parameter of the family converges). Our main result gives a necessary and sufficient condition in term of the total variation of the family of probability measures on R_+. As a byproduct, we obtain the existence of a limit value (for general means) for control systems having a compact invariant set and satisfying suitable nonexpansive property.Comment: 21 pages, 2 figure

Architecture and Implementation of a Trust Model for Pervasive Applications

Collaborative effort to share resources is a significant feature of pervasive computing environments. To achieve secure service discovery and sharing, and to distinguish between malevolent and benevolent entities, trust models must be defined. It is critical to estimate a device\u27s initial trust value because of the transient nature of pervasive smart space; however, most of the prior research work on trust models for pervasive applications used the notion of constant initial trust assignment. In this paper, we design and implement a trust model called DIRT. We categorize services in different security levels and depending on the service requester\u27s context information, we calculate the initial trust value. Our trust value is assigned for each device and for each service. Our overall trust estimation for a service depends on the recommendations of the neighbouring devices, inference from other service-trust values for that device, and direct trust experience. We provide an extensive survey of related work, and we demonstrate the distinguishing features of our proposed model with respect to the existing models. We implement a healthcare-monitoring application and a location-based service prototype over DIRT. We also provide a performance analysis of the model with respect to some of its important characteristics tested in various scenarios

Risk-Adjusted Capitation Payments: How Well Do Principal Inpatient Diagnosis-Based Models Work in the German Situation? Results From a Large Data Set

The Risk Adjustment Reform Act of 2001 mandates that a health-status-based risk adjustment mechanism has to be implemented in Germany's Statutory Health Insurance system by January 1, 2007. German parliament decided this as with the existing demographic risk adjustment model, that means there is cream skimming and sickness funds hesitate to engage in managing care for the chronical ill. Four approaches were used to test the feasibility of incorporating use of diagnosis as a proxy measure for health status in a German risk adjustment formula. The first two models used standard demographic and socio-demographic variables. The other two models are separately incorporating a simple binary indicator for hospitilization and Hierarchical Coexisting Conditions (HCCs: DxCG® Risk Adjustment Software Release 6.1) using inpatient diagnosis. Age and gender grouping accounted for 3.2% of the variation in total expenditures for concurrent as well as prospective models. The current German risk adjusters age, sex, and invalidity status account for 5.1% and 4.5% of the variance in the concurrent and prospective models respectively. There are substantial increases in explanatory power, however, when HCCs are added. Age, gender, invalidity status and HCC covariates explain about 37% of the variations of the total expenditures in a concurrent model and roughly 12% of the variations of total expenditures in a prospective model. For high-risk (cost) groups, substantial underprediction remains; conversely, for the low-risk group, represented by enrolees who did not show any health care expense in the base year, all of the models over-predict expenditure. --Risk Adjustment,HCCs,Germany

Implementing a learning technology strategy: top-down strategy meets bottom-up culture

Using interview-based 'insider case study' research, this paper outlines why the University of Salford has adopted a Learning Technologies Strategy and examines the factors which are likely to lead to its successful implementation. External reasons for the adoption focused on the need to: respond to 'increased Higher Education (HE) competition', meet student expectations of learning technology use, provide more flexibility and access to the curriculum, address the possible determining effect of technology and establish a Virtual Learning Environment (VLE) presence in this 'particular area of the HE landscape'. Internal drivers centred on the need to: continue a 'bottom-up' e-learning pilot project initiative, particularly given that a VLE is a 'complex tool' which requires effective strategic implementation, and promote the idea that learning technology will play an important role in determining the type of HE institution that the University of Salford wishes to become. Likely success factors highlighted the need to: create 'time and space' for innovation, maintain effective communication and consultation at all levels of the organization, emphasize the operational aspects of the strategy, establish a variety of staff development processes and recognize the negotiatory processes involved in understanding the term 'web presence' in local teaching cultures. Fundamentally, the paper argues that policy makers should acknowledge the correct 'cultural configuration' of HE institutions when seeking to manage and achieve organizational change. Thus, it is not just a question of establishing 'success factors' per se but also whether they are contextualized appropriately within a 'correct' characterization of the organizational culture

Human nature in a post-essentialist world

In this paper I examine a well-known articulation of the skeptical view of human nature, a paper by Hull (1986). I then review a recent reply to Hull by Machery (2008). I show that Machery’s account of human nature is not very useful and is scientifically suspect. Finally, I introduce an alternative account of human nature—the “life-history trait cluster” conception of human nature—which I hold is scientifically sound, pragmatically useful, and makes sense of (at least some of) our intuitions about human (or, more generally, species) nature