Non-Life Insurance Pricing: Multi Agents Model

We use the maximum entropy principle for pricing the non-life insurance and recover the B\"{u}hlmann results for the economic premium principle. The concept of economic equilibrium is revised in this respect.Comment: 6 pages, revtex

Moving on after critical incidents in health care. Second victims: A qualitative study of the experiences of nurses and midwives

Aims: The aims of this study were to gain a deeper understanding of the experiences of nurses and midwives who have been involved in a critical incident in a non-critical care area and to explore how they have ‘moved-on’ from the event. Background: It is irrefutable that health care is intrinsically risk-laden and perceived to be personally and professionally demanding for those who are employed within it. The term ‘second victim’ has been assigned to health care professionals who experienced emotional distress as a result of their involvement in critical incidents. Despite the recognition that critical incidents contribute to workrelated stress, strategies employed by nurses and midwives to move-on from their often traumatic experiences of these events in non-critical care settings were not widely reported. Research design: An interpretive descriptive design based on the scientific worldview of constructivism guided inductive inquiry to interpret the meaning of moving-on central to nurses and midwives who have lived through the impact of critical incidents. Methods: Purposive sampling was used to recruit 10 nurses and midwives to participate in the study. Data collection comprised of semi-structured interviews, memos and field notes. Data was concurrently collected and analysed with the data management software NVivo 11, to derive themes and patterns, which enabled the researcher and the study-participants to co-construct knowledge. A thematic analytical method stipulated a coherent analytical framework to evolve the emerging themes and transform the data into credible interpretive description findings. Findings: The findings revealed five main themes (1) initial emotional and physical response, (2) the aftermath, (3) long-lasting repercussions, (4) workplace support and (5) moving-on. Nurses and midwives experienced intense initial reactions and tumultuous emotions in the aftermath of the event and desired to share their burden. Various unsupportive workplace practices convoluted the reclamation of their professional competence, whilst adaptive strategies to promote physical and mental well-being enabled the participants to rise above the impact of critical incidents. Discussion: This study highlighted several issues fundamental to withstand and overcome the personally damaging and professionally destructive challenges associated with critical incidents. The discussion of findings revealed new insights into the significance of support and a generally optimistic outlook derived from a well-adjusted work-life balance. Future research is required to explore the perceived effectiveness of workplace practices, as well as the role of education. Relevance: This study presented an opportunity to shed light on the perceptions of ‘nurse and midwife-second victims’ within a range of non-critical care settings. Through their lens, the strategies they engaged in to move-on from the event were identified and their call for organisational and collegial support received a voice. Conclusion: This study explored how nurses and midwives moved-on following critical incidents in various clinical areas. The identification of adaptive strategies contributed to the existing body of knowledge surrounding this phenomenon. Findings have the potential to inform health care organisations with the aim to support others who experienced critical incidents in health care, as well as guide nursing and midwifery education programs to raise awareness of the potential effects associated with the impact of critical incidents

Bootstrap schemes for time series (in Russian)

We review and compare block, sieve and local bootstraps for time series and thereby illuminate theoretical aspects of the procedures as well as their performance on finite-sample data. Our view is selective with the intention of providing a new and fair picture of some particular aspects of bootstrapping time series. The generality of the block bootstrap is contrasted with the sieve bootstrap. We discuss implementational advantages and disadvantages, and argue that the sieve often outperforms the block method. Local bootstraps, designed for nonparametric smoothing problems, are easy to use and implement but exhibit in some cases low performance.

Rare Animals of Back Bay, Virginia Beach, Virginia

(First paragraph) The Back Bay region is located in extreme southeastern Virginia and extends into adjacent North Carolina as the upper reach of the Currituck Sound watershed. The Back Bay ecosystem encompasses the only large intact barrier beach system in Virginia south of the Chesapeake Bay. The dynamic natural resource history of Back Bay is well known for waterfowl and fishes; however, the significance of this region is poorly known for the majority of plants, animals, and natural communities (but see Ludwig, et al. this volume)

Verteilungswirkungen der Reformpläne der Großen Koalition : Rentner und Familien sind die Hauptprofiteure

Das stabile Wirtschaftswachstum der vergangenen Jahre hat finanzielle Spielräume im deutschen Staatshaushalt geschaffen. Diese will die neu gebildete Große Koalition unter anderem nutzen, um breite Bevölkerungsschichten zu entlasten. Im Koalitionsvertrag von CDU/CSU und SPD sind dazu eine ganze Reihe von sozial- und steuerpolitischen Reformmaßnahmen aufgeführt, deren Verteilungseffekte in der vorliegenden Untersuchung abgeschätzt werden. Um das Ausmaß der Verteilungseffekte festzustellen, wird das verfügbare Haushaltseinkommen vor und nach der Reform ermittelt. Unterstellt wird auch, dass sämtliche Maßnahmen heute eingeführt werden, auch wenn deren Umsetzung selbstverständlich für unterschiedliche Zeitpunkte geplant ist. Folgende Maßnahmen werden in den Berechnungen berücksichtigt: die weitgehende Abschaffung des Solidaritätszuschlags, die Erhöhung des Kindergeldes und des Kinderfreibetrags, die Abschaffung der Obergrenze beim Kinderzuschlag, die Abschaffung der Kita-Gebühren, die Absenkung der Beiträge zur Arbeitslosenversicherung und die paritätische Finanzierung der Krankenversicherungsbeiträge zu gleichen Teilen durch Beschäftigte und Betriebe. Außerdem werden die Stabilisierung des Rentenniveaus bei 48 Prozent und die Ausweitung der Mütterrente untersucht

A Discrete Time Benchmark Approach for Finance and Insurance

This paper proposes an integrated appraoch to discrete time modelling in finance and insurance. This approach is based on the existence of a specific benchmark portfolio, known as the growth optimal portfolio. When used as numeraire, this portfolio ensures that all benchmarked price processes are super-martingales. A fair market is characterized in terms of the type of maximum that the optimal growth rate attains. In general, arbitrage amounts arise due to supermartingale property of benchmarked traded prices. No measure transformation is needed for the pricing of insurance policies and derivatives in a fair market.financial and insurance market model; benchmark approach; growth optimal portfolio; numeraire portfolio; arbitrage amount; fair pricing; unit linked insurance

MissForest - nonparametric missing value imputation for mixed-type data

Modern data acquisition based on high-throughput technology is often facing the problem of missing data. Algorithms commonly used in the analysis of such large-scale data often depend on a complete set. Missing value imputation offers a solution to this problem. However, the majority of available imputation methods are restricted to one type of variable only: continuous or categorical. For mixed-type data the different types are usually handled separately. Therefore, these methods ignore possible relations between variable types. We propose a nonparametric method which can cope with different types of variables simultaneously. We compare several state of the art methods for the imputation of missing values. We propose and evaluate an iterative imputation method (missForest) based on a random forest. By averaging over many unpruned classification or regression trees random forest intrinsically constitutes a multiple imputation scheme. Using the built-in out-of-bag error estimates of random forest we are able to estimate the imputation error without the need of a test set. Evaluation is performed on multiple data sets coming from a diverse selection of biological fields with artificially introduced missing values ranging from 10% to 30%. We show that missForest can successfully handle missing values, particularly in data sets including different types of variables. In our comparative study missForest outperforms other methods of imputation especially in data settings where complex interactions and nonlinear relations are suspected. The out-of-bag imputation error estimates of missForest prove to be adequate in all settings. Additionally, missForest exhibits attractive computational efficiency and can cope with high-dimensional data.Comment: Submitted to Oxford Journal's Bioinformatics on 3rd of May 201

The impact of critical incidents on nurses and midwives: A systematic review

© 2020 John Wiley & Sons Ltd Aims: To synthesise the existing literature, which focuses on the impact of critical incidents on nurses and midwives, and to explore their experiences related to the support they received in the current healthcare environment to move on from the event. Design: Systematic review and qualitative synthesis. Data sources: The electronic databases CINAHL, MEDLINE, PsycINFO, PubMed, Embase and Nursing and Allied Health (ProQuest) were systematically searched from 2013–2018, and core authors and journals identified in the literature were manually investigated. Review methods: Qualitative studies of all research design types written in English were included according to the PRISMA reporting guidelines. The methodological quality of included studies was evaluated using the Joanna Briggs Institute (JBI) Critical Appraisal Checklist for Qualitative Research. Results: A total of 7,520 potential publications were identified. After removal of duplicate citations, study selection and appraisal process, 11 qualitative primary research papers progressed to the meta-synthesis by meta-aggregation. The 179 findings and sub-findings from the included studies were extracted, combined and synthesised into three statements addressing three different aspects within the context of critical incidents: the experiences of the impact, the perceptions of support and the ability to move on. Conclusion: This review illuminated that moving-on after critical incidents is a complex and wearisome journey for nurses and midwives. More attention should to be drawn to second victims within general nursing and midwifery practice to strengthen their ability to navigate the aftermath of critical incidents and reclaim the professional confidence indispensable to remain in the workforce