Influence of Procedural and Distributive Variables on Settlement Rates in Employment Discrimination Mediation, The

Mediators and scholars are interested in factors that contribute to a successful mediation. The settlement of the dispute is one measure of success. If one could identify certain key process or outcome variables that caused more disputes to be settled in mediation, a mediator could use this information to maximize settlement potential. We seek to add to this search for the holy grail of mediation settlement.\u27 Using an extensive database from the evaluation of the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC) we attempt to determine whether certain procedural and distributive factors are significant predictors of case resolution. We also examine whether other factors, such as whether a party was represented at the mediation, are correlated with resolution of the dispute

International Diversification of the Lower 400 Firms of the S&P 500 Index

E. Tylor Claggett, Ph.D., CFA, is professor of finance at Salisbury University in Salidsby, MD 21801-6860. He also serves as the director of the Financial Planning track within the Department of Economics and Finance of the Perdue School of Business. Danny M. Ervin, Ph.D., is associate professor of finance at Salisbury University in Salisbury, MD 21801-6820. He also serves as the director so the Shore Energy Center within the Department of Economics and Finance of the Perdue School of Business

Obstacle tower : a generalization challenge in vision, control, and planning

The rapid pace of recent research in AI has been driven in part by the presence of fast and challenging simulation environments. These environments often take the form of games; with tasks ranging from simple board games, to competitive video games. We propose a new benchmark - Obstacle Tower: a high fidelity, 3D, 3rd person, procedurally generated environment. An agent playing Obstacle Tower must learn to solve both low-level control and high-level planning problems in tandem while learning from pixels and a sparse reward signal. Unlike other benchmarks such as the Arcade Learning Environment, evaluation of agent performance in Obstacle Tower is based on an agent's ability to perform well on unseen instances of the environment. In this paper we outline the environment and provide a set of baseline results produced by current state-of-the-art Deep RL methods as well as human players. These algorithms fail to produce agents capable of performing near human level.peer-reviewe

International Diversification and Retirement Withdrawals International Diversification and Retirement Withdrawals International Diversification and Retirement Withdrawals

Abstract This study evaluates the success of the monthly withdrawal of funds from hypothetical retirement portfolios for the period January 1930 to December 2001. The objective of this research is to provide an empirical examination of the historical effect of global diversification on the withdrawal of funds from a retirement portfolio. We compare portfolios consisting of U.S. stocks and U.S. corporate bonds, and portfolios consisting of global stocks and U.S. corporate bonds. We examine both portfolio compositions using a variety of portfolio weights, fund withdrawal rates, and fund withdrawal periods. The results of the study indicate that, in general, portfolios with a higher equity portion had a greater likelihood of sustaining a given number of withdrawals over this time. Additionally, for much of the 1930 to 2001 period, including international stocks in a withdrawal portfolio decreased the likelihood the withdrawals lasted for a given period. However, the inclusion of international stocks does increase the terminal value of retirement portfolios after withdrawals during the latter part of the period under study. The results of this study can be used for retirement planning since it provides a historical perspective on the success of various withdrawal rates. The results can also be used to determine the value of the portfolio an individual needs at retirement to fund a given level of withdrawals. This can assist in the retirement timing decision