Algorithms & Fiduciaries: Existing and Proposed Regulatory Approaches to Artificially Intelligent Financial Planners

Artificial intelligence is no longer solely in the realm of science fiction. Today, basic forms of machine learning algorithms are commonly used by a variety of companies. Also, advanced forms of machine learning are increasingly making their way into the consumer sphere and promise to optimize existing markets. For financial advising, machine learning algorithms promise to make advice available 24–7 and significantly reduce costs, thereby opening the market for financial advice to lower-income individuals. However, the use of machine learning algorithms also raises concerns. Among them, whether these machine learning algorithms can meet the existing fiduciary standard imposed on human financial advisers and how responsibility and liability should be partitioned when an autonomous algorithm falls short of the fiduciary standard and harms a client. After summarizing the applicable law regulating investment advisers and the current state of robo-advising, this Note evaluates whether robo-advisers can meet the fiduciary standard and proposes alternate liability schemes for dealing with increasingly sophisticated machine learning algorithms

Damned Lies & Criminal Sentencing Using Evidence-Based Tools

The boom of big data and predictive analytics has revolutionized business. eHarmony matches customers based on shared likes and expectations for romance, and Target uses similar methods to strategically push its products on shoppers. Courts and Departments of Corrections have also sought to employ similar tools. However, the use of data analytics in sentencing raises a host of constitutional concerns. In State v. Loomis, the Wisconsin Supreme Court was faced with whether the use of an actuarial risk assessment tool based on a proprietary formula violates a defendant’s right to due process where the defendant could not review how the various inputs were weighed. The opinion attempts to save a constitutionally dubious technique and reads as a warning to lower courts in the proper use of predictive analytics. This article explores certain equal protection and due process arguments implicated by Loomis

Fecundidad deseada en América Latina: tendencias y diferenciales en siete países

Incluye Bibliografí

Birth intervals, postponement, and fertility decline in Africa: a new type of transition?

We investigated birth-interval dynamics in 24 African countries using data from 76 Demographic and Health Surveys conducted since 1986. Controlling for selection bias in the birth-history data using the Brass-Juárez method and regression models produced almost identical results. Birth intervals have lengthened in every country examined. This analysis uncovered a distinctive and previously undocumented pattern of childbearing that is prevalent across sub-Saharan Africa. After allowing for time trends in birth-interval length, the lengthening of birth intervals in almost every country varies little by women's age or parity. Moreover, in several countries, birth intervals are now too long to be explicable by birth spacing contingent on the age of women's youngest child. Rather, women are postponing births for other reasons. These findings offer empirical support for the idea that the fertility transition in sub-Saharan Africa is following a different pattern from that observed elsewhere

Refining the criteria for stalled fertility declines: an application to rural KwaZulu-Natal, South Africa, 1990-2005

Stalled fertility declines have been identified in several regions across the developing world, but the current conceptualization of a stalled fertility decline is poorly theorized and does not lend itself to objective measurement. We propose a more rigorous and statistically testable definition of stalled fertility decline that can be applied to time-series data. We then illustrate the utility of our definition through its application to data from rural South Africa for the period 1990-2005 collected from a demographic surveillance site. Application of the approach suggests that fertility decline has indeed stalled in rural KwaZulu-Natal, at about three children per woman. The stall, some 20 percent above the replacement fertility level, does not appear to be associated with a rise in wanted fertility or attenuated access to contraceptive methods. This identification of a stalled fertility decline provides the first evidence of such a stall in southern Africa, the region with the lowest fertility levels in sub-Saharan Africa

Conflicting Preferences: A Reason Fertility Tends to Be Too High or Too Low

Fertility has often seemed to be too high or too low, relative not only to social and economic goals, but also to reproductive preferences. In developing countries actual fertility has often been higher than desired family size, while in developed societies fertility tends to be below replacement level even though people generally say that they want at least two children. In explanations of fertility extremes, or of the discrepancies between desired and actual fertility, the effect of partners' holding different preferences has tended to be overlooked. Individual preferences expected to lead to replacement-level reproduction may in combination generate substantially higher or lower fertility. In explaining such outcomes, a crucial question is what happens when spousal preferences diverge. Given that personal practices or social norms may systematically favor high or low preferences in the event of disagreement, chance alone will ensure that desired and actual fertility do not coincide. Copyright 2003 by The Population Council, Inc..