The Efficiency of Pension Plan Investment Menus: Investment Choices in Defined Contribution Pension Plans

Few previous studies have explored whether defined contribution retirement saving plans offer sufficiently diversified investment menus, though it is likely that these menus significantly shape workers’ accumulations of retirement wealth. This paper assesses the efficiency and performance of 401(k) investment options offered by a large group of US employers. We show that most plans are efficient compared to market benchmark indexes. Three performance measures underscore the fact that these plans tend to offer a sensible investment menu, when measured in terms of the menus’ mean-variance efficiency, diversification, and participant utility. The key factor contributing to plan efficiency and performance has to do with the types of funds offered, rather than the total number of investment options provided.

Effective pattern discovery for text mining

Many data mining techniques have been proposed for mining useful patterns in text documents. However, how to effectively use and update discovered patterns is still an open research issue, especially in the domain of text mining. Since most existing text mining methods adopted term-based approaches, they all suffer from the problems of polysemy and synonymy. Over the years, people have often held the hypothesis that pattern (or phrase) based approaches should perform better than the term-based ones, but many experiments did not support this hypothesis. This paper presents an innovative technique, effective pattern discovery which includes the processes of pattern deploying and pattern evolving, to improve the effectiveness of using and updating discovered patterns for finding relevant and interesting information. Substantial experiments on RCV1 data collection and TREC topics demonstrate that the proposed solution achieves encouraging performance

Dietary Change of English, French and Chinese Speaking Immigrants in Ottawa and Gatineau, Canada

Open Access Publication by JSciMed Central® is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License.Objectives: The multicultural study aims at examining Dietary Change (Dietary Behaviour Change and Dietary Belief Change) of English, French and Chinese speaking immigrants in Ottawa and Gatineau, Canada, and identifying demographic factors that correlate with the change and impact the change. Materials and Methods: In total, 810 immigrants of the three language sub-groups were recruited by purposive-sampling. Using self-reports, respondents answered questions regarding Behaviour Change and Belief Change in Nutritional Food Consumption and Junk and Processed Food Consumption, and Demography in Multicultural Lifestyle Change Questionnaire of English, French or Chinese version. Percentage, significance of difference, correlation, regression and factor analysis were performed respectively to analyze the data in Dietary Change. Results: Immigrants of different gender, language and category sub-groups exhibited different rates in nutritional food and junk and processed food consumption changes, increasing and decreasing rates in consumption of different nutritional foods, increasing and decreasing rates in consumption of different junk and processed foods, and rates in nutritional food and junk and processed food belief changes. However, no statistical difference between the rates, except significant differences between increasing and decreasing rates of different category sub-groups in consumption of different nutritional foods and consumption of different junk and processed foods. Dietary Change (Dietary Behaviour Change + Dietary Belief Change) was correlated positively with Speaking Languages, Age and Religion, and Dietary Behaviour Change was correlated negatively with Religion. Speaking Languages, Age and Religion significantly impacted Dietary Change, and Religion significantly impacted Dietary Behaviour Change. Speaking Languages and Age significantly impacted Dietary Belief Change. One factor (factor one: dietary behaviour change factor) significantly influenced Dietary Change. Other factor (factor two: dietary belief change factor) did not significantly impacted Dietary Change. Conclusion: Immigrants of different sub-groups in Canada experienced different Dietary Change. Religion was a main factor influencing Dietary Change. Speaking Languages and Age were important factors impacting Dietary Belief Change. Acculturation was a relating factor contributing Dietary Change. Data of immigrant dietary change can provide evidence for dietetic health policy-making and policy-revising in Canada

The More the Better? Characteristics and Efficiency of 401(k) Investment Menus

Few previous studies have explored whether defined contribution retirement saving plans offer sufficiently diversified investment menus, though it is likely that these menus significantly shape workers’ accumulations of retirement wealth. This paper assesses the efficiency and performance of 401(k) investment options offered by a large group of US employers. We show that the majority of plans is efficient compared to market benchmark indexes. Three performance measures underscore the fact that these plans tend to offer a sensible investment menu, when measured in terms of the menus’ mean-variance efficiency, diversification, and participant utility. The key factor contributing to plan efficiency and performance is the particular set of funds offered, rather than the total number of investment options provided. We conclude that, in 401(k) arena, “more” is not necessarily “better.

Financial education in China: a comparative analysis through the concept of financial literacy and global perspectives

Financial literacy, usually used interchangeably by scholars as financial capability, is the ability to evaluate all the possible financial choices and make informed judgement according to personal circumstances in the short-term or in the long-run. Although financial education is a new field of education, by 2015, a total of 59 countries had launched or prepare to launch national strategies for financial education. In 2018, China issued the national financial education curriculum standards for the first time to guide the development of financial education curriculum from kindergartens to universities. The research question is how to interpret financial literacy and financial education in the context of China. However, due to the limited time of development in the field of financial education, there is a lack of theory that can be used to analyse the national curriculum of financial education. Therefore, the purpose of this study is to establish a conceptual framework of financial education based on the current theoretical development of the field and to apply it to the analysis of the Chinese financial education curriculum. The author argues that the current experience of financial education of other countries is of limited help to the establishment of financial education in China due to the differences in national conditions. In order to understand the practices of financial education curricula underpinning different national conditions, this research reviews the cases of several countries in their development of financial education. Firstly, before improving financial literacy became an international trend, the United States, the United Kingdom, Canada and Australia had established national and regional surveys of financial literacy prior to introducing financial literacy into national curricula. This was the origin of the development of the formal definition of the term financial literacy. Secondly, after the involvement of international educational organizations in the field of financial education, more countries then established national financial education programmes. The case studies of the United States, the United Kingdom, New Zealand and Japan show how countries have moved on to building or improving their national curricula for financial education in the context of globalization. Therefore, this research further draws the differences between financial education in China and other countries through comparative analysis. The results show that the understanding of financial literacy in Chinese context is different from that of other countries. With the differences in the theoretical basis and national conditions, the educational objectives of financial education in China are also different from that of other countries. The author suggests that the new characteristics founded in Chinese financial education can be incorporated into the current financial education framework. Meanwhile, 'preparing for the future' can be one of the goals of Chinese financial education. Further research is needed to analyse the effectiveness of Chinese financial education. In addition, more theoretical studies are needed in the field of financial education to promote consensus on the concept of financial literacy