Elevating the Influence of Arts and Culture: A Cleveland Playbook

This is the story of how the Cuyahoga County arts and culture sector went from fiscal emergency to securing one of the highest levels of public funding for arts and culture in the country to becoming recognized as a national leader in creative placemaking. This playbook examines the role and lessons of CPAC as inspirator, catalyst, advocate, adviser, think tank, policy strategist, data source, convener. As a result of CPAC's work: Tax money has been directed for arts and culture Facilities have been built or renovated Governments have become involvedCreative businesses have merged or collaborated Innovative cross sector partnerships have emergedThrough CPAC's process outlined in the playbook, organizations and communities anywhere can see what worked in Northeast Ohio and what did not.  Any one of the strategies in this playbook could be beneficial, depending on a community's vision and current situation.  It is our hope that our story can provide other organizations with insight into how they might strengthen their own arts and culture sectors and thus their whole communities

Effects of Price Volatility and Surging South American Soybean Production on Short-run Soybean Basis Dynamics

This study investigates the effects of South American production (SAP) and futures volatility on the soybean price dynamics in terms of their effects on the basis. The results of the econometric model showed that both South American production and futures volatility of the nearby contract have negative effects on the basis though in the forecast model, lagged values of these two factors failed to predict basis change in the future. If information about the change of the expected SAP or futures volatility is available, then the model can predict the changes in basis. This information would be helpful for hedgers to decide the time to lift their hedge.Crop Production/Industries, Marketing,

Another Look at the Inflation-Target Horizon

The conduct of monetary policy within an inflation-targeting framework requires the establishment of an inflation-target horizon, which is the average time it takes inflation to return to the target. Policy-makers have an interest in communicating this horizon, since it is likely to help anchor inflation expectations. This article focuses on the determination of the appropriate policy horizon by reporting on two recent Bank of Canada studies. The evidence suggests that the current target horizon of six to eight quarters remains appropriate. It is important to note that the duration of the optimal inflation-target horizon varies widely, depending on the combination of shocks to the economy. In rare cases when the financial accelerator is triggered by a persistent shock, such as an asset-price bubble, it may be appropriate to take a longer view of the inflation-target horizon.

Does Financial Structure Matter for the Information Content of Financial Indicators?

Of particular concern to monetary policy-makers is the considerable unreliability of financial variables for predicting GDP growth and inflation. As Stock and Watson (2003) find, some financial variables work well in some countries or over some time periods and forecast horizons, but the results do not show any clear pattern. This may be caused by the changing nature of financial structures within countries across time, or the differing types of financial structures across countries. The authors assess the extent to which financial structure across countries influences the information content of financial variables for predicting real GDP growth and inflation. Their assumption is that financial asset prices will dominate financial quantities in economies with highly developed market-based financial systems. The authors use standard methods to determine the predictive content of common financial asset prices and quantities for 29 countries. They find no systematic pattern between financial structure and whether financial asset prices or quantities are the best financial indicators for monetary policy. Importantly, financial quantities are sometimes the best financial indicator, even in economies with highly developed market-based financial systems. The authors conclude that it would be difficult to tell, a priori, whether a financial asset price or quantity would be the best indicator for monetary policy for a particular country at a particular point in time.Inflation and prices; Business fluctuations and cycles; Credit and credit aggregates; Monetary aggregates; Interest rates

Impacts of government risk management policies on hedging in futures and options:LPM2 hedge model vs. EU hedge model

The main objective of this study is to compare the impacts of government payments and crop insurance policies on the use of futures and options measured from a downside risk hedge model with the impacts analyzed by the expected utility (EU) hedge model. Understanding the effects of government-provided risk management tools on the private market risk management tools, such as futures and options, provides value to both crop farmers and policy makers. Comparison of the impacts from the two hedge models shows that crop farmer will hedge less in futures under the LPM2 model than under the EU hedge model. This finding indicates that model misspecification is another reason for the phenomenon that farmers actually hedge less in futures than predicted by the EU model. From the perspective of exploring new research techniques, this study applied two relatively new simulation concepts, copula simulation and conditional kernel density approach, to make the simulation assumptions less restrictive and more consistent with observations. The copula simulation applied in this study allows yield and price to have more flexible joint distribution functions than multivariate normal; the conditional kernel density approach used in farm yield simulation enables the variance of farm yield varies with county yield rather than being constant.Down-side Risk, LPM2 Hedge Model, Government Payments, Crop Insurance Policies, Copula Simulation, Conditional Kernel Density, Agricultural Finance,

Hedging Downside Risk to Farm Income with Futures and Options: Effects of Government Payment Programs and Federal Crop Insurance Plans

The high proportion of government payments in total crop farm income and the purchase of subsidized crop insurance have changed the income distribution of U.S. crop farmers. As a result, the risk management behaviors of U.S. crop farmers are affected by these programs in terms of the use of private market risk management tools, such as futures and options. The objective of this research is to investigate the effects of the government payments and federal crop insurance policies on the usage of futures and options by crop farmers from a downside risk management perspective. Results in this study suggest that both yield insurance and revenue insurance creates more hedging demands for futures. But revenue insurance decreases the buying of put options at the same time. Loan deficiency government payments substitutes largely for the hedging role of put options while Counter Cyclical payments substitutes futures hedge. This research contributes the literature by proposing to use a downside risk hedge model, the second-order lower partial moment (LPM2) hedge model, to investigate the interaction of government and private risk management tools used by crop farmers. This study also initiatively applies the conditional kernel density method and the copula approach in the data simulation process. The conditional kernel density method generates county yield and farm yield with the same conditional pattern as revealed in the historical yields. The copula simulation allows the crop yield and prices have more flexible joint distributions other than bivariate normal.Agricultural and Food Policy, Agricultural Finance,

General Reference

This chapter stands out from the other chapters in this book. Whereas chapters 2-19 are arranged by subject, this one is a general reference resource guide. It includes almanacs, bibliographies, and guides to the literature, biographical sources (formerly a stand-alone chapter), general-purpose databases, and Internet search sites. Library search tools such as discovery layers are also described here. The Internet continues to have a huge impact on reference services. Some of that influence is via search interfaces like Oxford Reference or general databases like Academic Search Complete. It can also be seen with Internet sources that go beyond the library, like Google Search or Facebook. This chapter hopes to guide reference librarians by describing these changes

An Evaluation of Laminated Offset Jawed Traps for Reducing Injuries to Coyotes

Increasing public concern about injuries caused by foothold traps has resulted in a considerable amount of research for more humane traps. Much of this research effort has focused on evaluating the Victor No. 3 Soft-Catch trap manufactured by Woodstream Corporation, Lititz, Pennsylvania (Linhart and Dasch 1992). Research has concentrated on two major areas: (1) efficiency and selectivity of different trap types and modifications used for capturing coyotes (Canis latrans) and (2) reducing animal injuries associated with trapping (Phillips and Mullis 1991). The Soft-Catch trap has been shown to reduce foot injury sustained by most captured furbearers (Tullar 1984, Olsen et al. 1986, Linhart et al. 1988, Olsen et al. 1988, Onderka et al. 1990)

Evaluation of Health Information on the Web

There is a growing number of websites containing patient or consumer health information. The assumption is that patients should be able to become knowledgeable about their health conditions and become more involved in the management of their own health, but there are concerns about the validity of the information to be found on the Web. The goal of this research is to develop a system that evaluates websites containing educational information about Inflammatory Bowel Disease (IBD) to determine their quality and appropriateness for consumers. A small number of websites on IBD were evaluated manually by experts in the field. A number of different approaches based on machine learning algorithms evaluate websites as Excellent, Informative or Not Useful. Results of this approach are promising, but inconclusive as the dataset of websites for training and testing was not sufficiently large for any real conclusions to be made

Ethnicity and smoking-associated DNA methylation changes at HIV co-receptor GPR15

Smoking is associated with poorer health outcomes for both African and European Americans. In order to better understand whether ethnic-specific genetic variation may underlie some of these differences, we compared the smoking-associated genome-wide methylation signatures of African Americans with those of European Americans, and followed up this analysis with a focused examination of the most ethnically divergent locus, cg19859270, at the GPR15 gene. We examined the association of methylation at this locus to the rs2230344 SNP and GPR15 gene and protein expression. Consistent with prior analyses, AHRR residue cg05575921 was the most differentially methylated residue in both African Americans and European Americans. However, the second most differentially methylated locus in African Americans, cg19859270, was only modestly differentially methylated in European Americans. Interrogation of the methylation status of this CpG residue found in GPR15, a chemokine receptor involved in HIV pathogenesis, showed a significant interaction of ethnicity with smoking as well as a marginal effect of genotype at rs2230344, a neighboring non-synonymous SNP, but only among African Americans. Gene and protein expression analyses showed that demethylation at cg19859270 was associated with an increase in both mRNA and protein levels. Since GPR15 is involved in the early stages of viral replication for some HIV-1 and HIV-2 isolates, and the prevalence of HIV is increased in African Americans and smokers, these data support a possible role for GPR15 in the ethnically dependent differential prevalence of HIV