ECONOMIC IMPACTS OF CHEMICAL USE REDUCTION ON THE SOUTH: DISCUSSION

Environmental Economics and Policy,

Graph-based Semi-Supervised & Active Learning for Edge Flows

We present a graph-based semi-supervised learning (SSL) method for learning edge flows defined on a graph. Specifically, given flow measurements on a subset of edges, we want to predict the flows on the remaining edges. To this end, we develop a computational framework that imposes certain constraints on the overall flows, such as (approximate) flow conservation. These constraints render our approach different from classical graph-based SSL for vertex labels, which posits that tightly connected nodes share similar labels and leverages the graph structure accordingly to extrapolate from a few vertex labels to the unlabeled vertices. We derive bounds for our method's reconstruction error and demonstrate its strong performance on synthetic and real-world flow networks from transportation, physical infrastructure, and the Web. Furthermore, we provide two active learning algorithms for selecting informative edges on which to measure flow, which has applications for optimal sensor deployment. The first strategy selects edges to minimize the reconstruction error bound and works well on flows that are approximately divergence-free. The second approach clusters the graph and selects bottleneck edges that cross cluster-boundaries, which works well on flows with global trends

Home Health Care Services: A Look At Audit Opinion Announcements And The Contagion Or Competitive Effect On Rival Firms

With the aging of the American population and the increase in demand for health care services, we can expect an increase in investment activity in the health care market.  This study focuses on whether intra-industry information transfers from going-concern audit opinion announcements create contagion or competitive stock price reactions in rival home health care firms.  Data are derived from a sample of firms traded on the NASDAQ, the New York Stock Exchange, or the American Stock Exchange.  Average standardized abnormal returns for each firm are computed during an 8-year period.  The findings suggest a dominating competitive effect for rival home health care and miscellaneous home service firms significant at the .05 level

Mortgage, Treasury, CD and Fed Funds Rates Spreads and Risk Premiums: How do They Impact Net Interest Margins?

This paper utilized FRED (Federal Reserve Economic Data) data from the Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis to examine historical risk premiums between 30-year mortgages and 30-year T-Bonds and spreads between yields on these two assets and funding costs represented by 6-month CD rates and fed funds rates. Risk premiums were greatest and spreads were smallest (some-times negative) during the high interest rate environment during the late 1970’s and early 1980’s. Risk premiums got smaller after the two financial crises of the 2000’s (the September 11, 2001 attack and the 2008 mortgage crisis) and the spreads became larger after both when the Federal Reserve cut rates tremendously. Despite these variations in income/cost spreads, net interest margins (to both total assets and earning assets) remained relatively stable. Regression analysis shows the best predictor of historical net interest margins was the 30-year treasury yield in lagged and non-lagged models. These results suggest the ability of banks to choose fund sources and fund uses allows them to reduce variation in net interest margins even while interest rates are volatile

Foreign Financial Institution Equities: Returns From Emerging Markets And Developed Markets Differ

With the vicissitude of the capital markets, investors continually seek new and innovative techniques that will identify securities that outperform the market.  In addition to the usual fundamental and technical analysis, the international markets may provide enhanced profit potential.  Investors may purchase securities of foreign companies to gain greater diversity and new investment opportunities

Long-Term Performance Of Foreign Food And Beverage Equities Traded On The New York Stock Exchange: A Look At Investment Opportunities

Because of the growth of international trade and the increase in sales and profits in the food and beverage industry in recent years investors may believe there is a great opportunity to reap high returns from foreign equities.  Cumulative excess returns from all newly issued foreign food and beverage equities over a 36-month period following the date listed on the New York Stock Exchange are tested for significant differences in performance to determine whether they outperform the S & P 500 returns.  Although the 36-month cumulative excess returns are not significant, findings indicate that the food and beverage ADRs performed 13.55 percent lower than the S & P 500 Index which serves as a proxy for the market in general.  Food and beverage seasoned equity offerings outperformed initial public offerings

Apparent survival of the salamander Salamandra salamandra is low because of high migratory activity

BACKGROUND: Understanding the demographic processes underlying population dynamics is a central theme in ecology. Populations decline if losses from the population (i.e., mortality and emigration) exceed gains (i.e., recruitment and immigration). Amphibians are thought to exhibit little movement even though local populations often fluctuate dramatically and are likely to go exinct if there is no rescue effect through immigration from nearby populations. Terrestrial salamanders are generally portrayed as amphibians with low migratory activity. Our study uses demographic analysis as a key to unravel whether emigration or mortality is the main cause of "losses" from the population. In particular, we use the analysis to challenge the common belief that terrestrial salamanders show low migratory activity. RESULTS: The mark-recapture analysis of adult salamanders showed that monthly survival was high (> 90%) without a seasonal pattern. These estimates, however, translate into rather low rates of local annual survival of only ~40% and suggest that emigration was important. The estimated probability of emigration was 49%. CONCLUSION: Our analysis shows that terrestrial salamanders exhibit more migratory activity than commonly thought. This may be due either because the spatial extent of salamander populations is underestimated or because there is a substantial exchange of individuals between populations. Our current results are in line with several other studies that suggest high migratory activity in amphibians. In particular, many amphibian populations may be characterized by high proportions of transients and/or floaters