Determinants of profitability in Spanish financial institutions. Comparing aided and non-aided entities

The last financial crisis has led to the greatest contribution of public funds ever made to Spanish banks. This paper studies why the need for support has been asymmetric, with not all of the institutions requiring aid. Based on profitability of assets (ROA), we determine using panel data econometric and logit response models the components of profit and loss accounts that generated profitability as well as the factors leading to some entities to ask for aid. The analyses show that before the beginning of the crisis there were significant differences between entities that needed aid and those that did not. The most profitable banks grounded their success in the traditional revenue components of financial institutions (such as margin on interest rates and commissions), as well as in revenues obtained from participated companies and extraordinary results. The model offers a tool to detect entities in difficulties in advance, reducing the financial and social costs of public interventions. The factors more impacting on profitability of Spanish institutions are also identifie

Classification of acoustic events using SVM-based clustering schemes

Acoustic events produced in controlled environments may carry information useful for perceptually aware interfaces. In this paper we focus on the problem of classifying 16 types of meeting-room acoustic events. First of all, we have defined the events and gathered a sound database. Then, several classifiers based on support vector machines (SVM) are developed using confusion matrix based clustering schemes to deal with the multi-class problem. Also, several sets of acoustic features are defined and used in the classification tests. In the experiments, the developed SVM-based classifiers are compared with an already reported binary tree scheme and with their correlative. Gaussian mixture model (GMM) classifiers. The best results are obtained with a tree SVM-based classifier that may use a different feature set at each node. With it, a 31.5% relative average error reduction is obtained with respect to the best result from a conventional binary tree scheme.Peer Reviewe

Thickness of the buccal bone wall and root angulation in the maxilla and mandible: an approach to cone beam computed tomography

Background: The objective of this paper is to anatomically describe the bone morphology in the maxillary and mandibular tooth areas, which might help in planning post-extraction implants. Methods: CBCT images (Planmeca ProMax 3D) of 403 teeth (208 upper teeth and 195 lower teeth) were obtained from 49 patients referred to the Dental School of Seville from January to December 2014. The thickness of the facial wall was measured at the crest, point A, 4mm below, point B, and at the apex, point C. The second parameter was the angle formed between the dental axis and the axis of the basal bone. Results: A total of 403 teeth were measured. In the maxilla, 89.4% of incisors, 93.94% of canines, 78% of premolars and 70.5% of molars had a buccal bone wall thickness less than the ideal 2mm. In the mandible, 73.5% of incisors, 49% of canines, 64% of premolars and 53% of molars had <1mm buccal bone thickness as measured at point B. The mean angulation in the maxilla was 11.67±6.37° for incisors, 16.88±7.93° for canines, 13.93±8.6° for premolars, and 9.89±4.8° for molars. In the mandible, the mean values were 10.63±8.76° for incisors, 10.98±7.36° for canines, 10.54±5.82° for premolars and 16.19±11.22° for molars. Conclusions: The high incidence of a buccal wall thickness of less than 2mm in over 80% of the assessed sites indicates the need for additional regeneration procedures, and several locations may also require custom abutments to solve the angulation problems for screw-retained crowns

Matching with a Handicap: The Case of Smoking in the Marriage Market

We develop a matching model on the marriage market, where individuals have preferences over the smoking status of potential mates, and over their socioeconomic quality. Spousal smoking is bad for non-smokers, but it is neutral for smokers, while individuals always prefer high socioeconomic quality. Furthermore, there is a gender difference in smoking prevalence, there being more smoking men than smoking women for all education levels, so that smoking women and non-smoking men are in short supply. The model generates clear cut conditions regarding matching patterns. Using CPS data and its Tobacco Use Supplements for the years 1996 to 2007, and proxing socioeconomic status by educational attainment, we .nd that these conditions are satis.ed. There are fewer "mixed" couples where the wife smokes than vice-versa, and matching is assortative on education within smoking types of couples. Among non-smoking wives those with smoking husbands have on average 0.14 fewer years of completed education than those with non-smoking husbands. Finally, and somewhat counterintuitively, we find that, as theory predicts, among smoking husbands those who marry smoking wives have on average 0.16 more years of completed education than those with non-smoking wives

Fatter Attraction: Anthropometric and Socioeconomic Matching on the Marriage Market

We construct a matching model on the marriage market along more than one characteristic, where individuals have preferences over physical attractiveness and socioeconomic characteristics that can be summarized by a one-dimensional index combining these various attributes. We show that under a (testable) separability assumption, the indices are ordinally identified. We estimate the model using data from the PSID. Our separability tests do not reject. We find that among men, a 10% increase in BMI can be compensated by a higher wage of around 3%. Similarly, for women, an additional year of education may compensate up to three BMI units

El efecto socializador del medio televisivo en jóvenes. Influencia de las conductas de gestión del conflicto mostradas por personajes de series de ficción

Clearly the influence of television in society, being the study of violence and its impact on children and young people the subject of most investigations. How to manage conflict becomes a variable indicative of violent behavior, therefore, this work has been an analysis of the styles of managing conflicts of characters in the television series most viewed by young people, being results based on the sex of the characters analyzed, and associating these different styles of behaviors and attitudes that young men and women assigned to.Resulta evidente la influencia del medio televisivo en la sociedad, siendo el estudio de la violencia y sus consecuencias en niños y jóvenes el objeto de la mayoría de las investigaciones al respecto. El modo de gestionar los conflictos se convierte en una variable indicativa de conductas violentas, por ello, este trabajo ha realizado un análisis de los estilos de gestionar conflictos de personajes de las series televisivas más vistas por jóvenes, hallándose resultados en función del sexo de los personajes analizados, y asociándose estas diferencias de estilos a conductas y actitudes que los jóvenes asignan a hombres o mujeres

Fuzzy integral based information fusion for classification of highly confusable non-speech sounds

Acoustic event classification may help to describe acoustic scenes and contribute to improve the robustness of speech technologies. In this work, fusion of different information sources with the fuzzy integral (FI), and the associated fuzzy measure (FM), are applied to the problem of classifying a small set of highly confusable human non-speech sounds. As FI is a meaningful formalism for combining classifier outputs that can capture interactions among the various sources of information, it shows in our experiments a significantly better performance than that of any single classifier entering the FI fusion module. Actually, that FI decision-level fusion approach shows comparable results to the high-performing SVM feature-level fusion and thus it seems to be a good choice when feature-level fusion is not an option. We have also observed that the importance and the degree of interaction among the various feature types given by the FM can be used for feature selection, and gives a valuable insight into the problem.Peer Reviewe

Acoustic event detection: SVM-based system and evaluation setup in CLEAR’07

In this paper, the Acoustic Event Detection (AED) system developed at the UPC is described, and its results in the CLEAR evaluations carried out in March 2007 are reported. The system uses a set of features composed of frequency-filtered band energies and perceptual features, and it is based on SVM classifiers and multi-microphone decision fusion. Also, the current evaluation setup and, in particular, the two new metrics used in this evaluation are presented.Peer ReviewedPostprint (author’s final draft