A hard nut to crack : regulatory failure shows how rating really works

Credit rating agencies such as Moody’s and Standard & Poor’s are key players in the governance of global financial markets. Given the very strong criticism the rating agencies faced in the wake of the global financial crisis 2008, how can we explain the puzzle of their survival? Market and regulatory reliance on ratings continues, despite the shift from a light-touch to a mandatory system of agency regulation and supervision. Drawing on the analysis of rating agency regulation in the US and the EU before and after the financial crisis, we argue that a pervasive, persistent and, in our view, erroneous understanding of rating has supported the never-ending story of rating agency authority. We show how treating ratings as metrics, private goods, and independent and neutral third-party opinions contributes to the ineffectiveness of rating agency regulation and supports the continuing authoritative standing of the credit rating agencies in market and regulatory practices

Can the Crowd Tell How I Feel? Trait Empathy and Ethnic Background in a Visual Pain Judgment Task.

Many advocate for artificial agents to be empathic. Crowdsourc- ing could help, by facilitating human-in-the-loop approaches and dataset crea- tion for visual emotion recognition algorithms. Although crowdsourcing has been employed successfully for a range of tasks, it is not clear how effective crowdsourcing is when the task involves subjective rating of emotions. We ex- amined relationships between demographics, empathy and ethnic identity in pain emotion recognition tasks. Amazon MTurkers viewed images of strangers in painful settings, and tagged subjects’ emotions. They rated their level of pain arousal and confidence in their responses, and completed tests to gauge trait empathy and ethnic identity. We found that Caucasian participants were less confident than others, even when viewing other Caucasians in pain. Gender cor- related to word choices for describing images, though not to pain arousal or confidence. The results underscore the need for verified information on crowdworkers, to harness diversity effectively for metadata generation tasks

Long‐term effectiveness of initiating non‐nucleoside reverse transcriptase inhibitor‐ versus ritonavir‐boosted protease inhibitor‐based antiretroviral therapy: implications for first‐line therapy choice in resource‐limited settings

Introduction In many resource‐limited settings, combination antiretroviral therapy (cART) failure is diagnosed clinically or immunologically. As such, there is a high likelihood that patients may stay on a virologically failing regimen for a substantial period of time. Here, we compared the long‐term impact of initiating non‐nucleoside reverse transcriptase inhibitor (NNRTI)‐ versus boosted protease inhibitor (bPI)‐based cART in British Columbia (BC), Canada. Methods We followed prospectively 3925 ART‐naïve patients who started NNRTIs (N=1963, 50%) or bPIs (N=1962; 50%) from 1 January 2000 until 30 June 2013 in BC. At six months, we assessed whether patients virologically failed therapy (a plasma viral load (pVL) >50 copies/mL), and we stratified them based on the pVL at the time of failure ≤500 versus >500 copies/mL. We then followed these patients for another six months and calculated their probability of achieving subsequent viral suppression (pVL 500 copies/mL, they had a 20% lower probability of suppressing at 12 months than pVL‐matched bPI initiators (0.37 (0.29–0.45) vs. 0.46 (0.38–0.54)). In terms of evolving HIV drug resistance, those who failed on NNRTI performed worse than bPI in all scenarios, especially if they failed with a viral load >500 copies/mL. Conclusions Our results show that patients who virologically failed at six months on NNRTI and continued on the same regimen had a lower probability of subsequently achieving viral suppression and a higher chance of evolving HIV drug resistance. These results suggest that improving access to regular virologic monitoring is critically important, especially if NNRTI‐based cART is to remain a preferred choice for first‐line therapy in resource‐limited settings