A CAMEL rating's shelf life

How quickly do the CAMEL ratings regulators assign to banks during on-site examinations become "stale"? One measure of the information content of CAMEL ratings is their ability to discriminate between banks that will fail and those that will survive. To assess the accuracy of CAMEL ratings in predicting failure, Rebel Cole and Jeffery Gunther use as a benchmark an offsite monitoring system based on publicly available accounting data. Their findings suggest that, if a bank has not been examined for more than two quarters, off-site monitoring systems usually provide a more accurate indication of survivability than its CAMEL rating. The lower predictive accuracy for CAMEL ratings “older” than two quarters causes the overall accuracy of CAMEL ratings to fall substantially below that of off-site monitoring systems. The higher predictive accuracy of off-site systems derives from both their timeliness—an updated off-site rating is available for every bank in every quarter—and the accuracy of the financial data on which they are based. Cole and Gunther conclude that off-site monitoring systems should continue to play a prominent role in the supervisory process, as a complement to on-site examinations.bank; bank failure; CAMEL; CAMEL rating; commercial bank; offsite supervision

Processing deficits in monitoring analog and digital displays: Implications for attentional theory and mental-state estimation research

Subjects performed short term memory tasks, involving both spatial and verbal components, and a visual monitoring task involving either analog or digital display formats. These two tasks (memory vs. monitoring) were performed both singly and in conjunction. Contrary to expectations derived from multiple resource theories of attentional processes, there was no evidence that when the two tasks involved the same cognitive codes (i.e., either both spatial or both verbal/linguistics) there was more of a dual task performance decrement than when the two tasks employed different cognitive codes/processes. These results are discussed in terms of their implications for theories of attentional processes and also for research in mental state estimation

Berry-phase blockade in single-molecule magnets

We formulate the problem of electron transport through a single-molecule magnet (SMM) in the Coulomb blockade regime taking into account topological interference effects for the tunneling of the large spin of a SMM. The interference originates from spin Berry phases associated with different tunneling paths. We show that in the case of incoherent spin states it is essential to place the SMM between oppositely spin-polarized source and drain leads in order to detect the spin tunneling in the stationary current, which exhibits topological zeros as a function of the transverse magnetic field.Comment: 4 pages, Revtex 4, 4 EPS figure

Evaluating Density Forecasts

We propose methods for evaluating density forecasts. We focus primarily on methods that are applicable regardless of the particular user's loss function. We illustrate the methods with a detailed simulation example, and then we present an application to density forecasting of daily stock market returns. We discuss extensions for improving suboptimal density forecasts, multi-step-ahead density forecast evaluation, multivariate density forecast evaluation, monitoring for structural change and its relationship to density forecasting, and density forecast evaluation with known loss function.

Evaluating density forecasts

The authors propose methods for evaluating and improving density forecasts. They focus primarily on methods that are applicable regardless of the particular user's loss function, though they take explicit account of the relationships between density forecasts, action choices, and the corresponding expected loss throughout. They illustrate the methods with a detailed series of examples, and they discuss extensions to improving and combining suboptimal density forecasts, multistep-ahead density forecast evaluation, multivariate density forecast evaluation, monitoring for structural change and its relationship to density forecasting, and density forecast evaluation with known loss function.Forecasting

Bear-Caused Human Fatalities in Yellowstone National Park: Characteristics and Trends

Three fatal bear (Ursus spp.) attacks in Yellowstone National Park (YNP), USA, from 2011 to 2015 were a catalyst for YNP managers to evaluate the circumstances of bear-caused fatalities as well as the bear safety messages it distributes to park visitors. I reviewed records of all fatal bear attacks that occurred in YNP from 1872 to 2018. Seven of the 8 fatalities were caused by grizzly bears (U. arctos horribilis). The per capita risk of being killed by a grizzly bear was 1 fatality for every 26.2 million park visits. Most fatal bear attacks in YNP involved surprise encounters and/or bears conditioned to human foods. Only 1 fatal bear attack was classified as predatory. Most fatal bear attacks involved men (75%), small party sizes of(88%), and occurred in remote backcountry areas (75%). Although the frequency of fatal bear attacks appears to have increased in recent years, the per capita risk of fatal bear attacks has declined. A few human behavioral modifications for recreating in bear country, including hiking with minimum group sizes ≥3 people, remaining on designated trails when hiking, not running from bears during encounters, and carrying bear spray when recreating in bear country have the potential to reduce the risk of fatal bear attacks in the park. Preventing bears from becoming conditioned to anthropogenic foods and garbage is another important factor in reducing bear-caused human fatalities

Electromagnetic wormholes and virtual magnetic monopoles

We describe new configurations of electromagnetic (EM) material parameters, the electric permittivity $\epsilon$ and magnetic permeability $\mu$, that allow one to construct from metamaterials objects that function as invisible tunnels. These allow EM wave propagation between two points, but the tunnels and the regions they enclose are not detectable to EM observations. Such devices function as wormholes with respect to Maxwell's equations and effectively change the topology of space vis-a-vis EM wave propagation. We suggest several applications, including devices behaving as virtual magnetic monopoles.Comment: 4 pages, 3 figure