Obergefell’s Missed Opportunity

The stock market plays a big role in our current nancial system and the uctuations onit are believed to depend on many dierent factors. One of the factors that are believedto be correlated to the stock market are macroeconomic variables, that is, variables thatindicate the status of the economical situation. Examples of such macroeconomic variablesare unemployment rate, loan interests and ination. Earlier attempts to predictthe stock market have been made by using process demanding methods such as arti-cial neural network. A multilayer perceptron is a self learning system that goes underthe category of an articial neural network. Such a network learns by being trainedon old data sets and has the capacity to identify relationships between dierent data.This method has been used in earlier studies to predict the stock market with goodresults. The problem statement of this report is to nd the optimal training interval fora multilayer perceptron on a day to day estimation of the Swedish OMXS30 index. Theinput to the algorithm consisted of 38 parameters, which in this case was a collectionof individual companies stock prices, foreign stock indexes, macroeconomic variables,previous and current values of the OMXS30 index. The results from the simulationsthat were executed on old stock data shows that 180 to 200 days of training yielded thebest results, where eight of nine periods over seven years (2007-2014) yielded prot. Theresults from the simulations during the periods with increasing index were sometimesbelow the index gain, but always with a prot. During periods of index decrease theresults were sometimes with a prot and sometimes non-prot. In the case of indexdecrease the result was always above the total index decrease. The conclusion is as theresults shows, that the optimal training interval is 180 to 200 days for the simulationsrun in the study of this report.1Aktiemarknaden spelar en stor roll i dagens finansiella system och fluktutionerna på börsen tros bero pa många orsaker. En av de saker som tros ha en koppling till börsen är makroekonomiska variabler, dvs sådana variabler som indikerar hur ekonomin mår. Exempel på makroekonomiska variabler ar arbetslöshet,       räntenivåer och i nation. Andra kopplingar som tros finnas till börsens utveckling är hur individuella aktier och utlandskabörser utvecklas. Tidigare försök har gjorts att forsöka forutsäga aktiemarknaden med hjalp av beräkningskrävande metoder, t. ex. Articiella neuron nät. En flerlagers perceptronar ett självlärande system som räknas som en typ av articiellt neuron nät. Nätverket lär sig genom att tränas pa gammal data och har formåagan att hitta samband mellan olika data. I tidigare studier har denna metod använts for att förutsäga aktiemarknaden med goda resultat. Problemformulering i denna rapport ar att ta reda på vilket det optimala träningsintervallet ar för en flerlagers perceptron för att, från en dag till en annan, förutsäga indexet på Stockholmsbörsen, OMXS30. Algoritmens indata bestod av totalt 38 parametrar som i detta fall var en samling av enskilda företagsaktievärden, utländska börsers index, makroekonomiska variabler, tidigare värden på OMXS30 samt det nuvarande värdet pa börsen. Resultaten från simulationerna som kördes pa gammal aktiedata visar att 180-200 dagar är det basta träningsintervallet daatta av nio stycken perioder över sju år (2007-2014) gick med vinst. Resultaten fransimulationerna under de perioder med stigande index blev i vissa fall under index, men alltid med vinst. I perioder med avtagande index sa blev resultaten i vissa fall vinstgivande och i andra fall inte vinstgivande, men i dessa fall alltid battre an den totalaindex nedgangen. Slutsatsen ar som resultaten visar att 180-200 dagar ar det optimala träningsintervallet for de simulationer som gjordes i undersökningen i denna rapport.

Flaherty's Missed Opportunity

Finance Minister Jim Flaherty’s business tax relief goals are a welcome start to tax relief, but should be accompanied by a broadening of the corporate tax base to make taxes more neutral and fair and enable future reductions, according to a report from the C.D. Howe Institute. In Flaherty’s Missed Opportunity, Duanjie Chen, George Weston Analyst in Tax Policy, says the federal government’s Economic Statement made good progress in October by promising a reduction in federal business tax rates by 2012, from 22.1 percent to 15 percent. Even after this reduction, however, the Canadian effective tax rate on most services will still be sixth highest among the 30 member countries of the OECD.fiscal policy, corporate tax policy

Missed Expectations: The Argentine Convertibility

This paper studies the process that led to the Argentine crisis. The crisis is understood as a major disappointment of previous expectations, indicated by widespread insolvencies and abrupt declines in consumption. The analysis concentrates on the sequence of public and private decisions, and the varying perceptions and policy incentives that motivated them. In the nineties Argentina searched for a new growth trend. During much of the period, the behavior of agents seemed to be based on the anticipation that current and future incomes could sustain a value of domestic spending much higher than in the past. The government was motivated to reinforce those expectations, for signaling and political economy reasons. The convertibility monetary regime not only provided a very visible nominal anchor, but also operated as a basic framework for financial contracts, mostly denominated in dollars. Dollar contracting implicitly presumed that the dollar value of incomes would support the servicing of debts. Despite precautionary measures, the reliance on the sustainability of the real exchange rate increased over time. In the late nineties exports stopped rising and the foreign supply of credit tightened. Facing these contraints, the economy contracted and the solvency of the government was put into question. The financial system was vulnerable both in the event of devaluation and that of a (large) deflation-cum-adjustment. As was implicit in its design and management, convertibility proved to have very large exit costs.http://deepblue.lib.umich.edu/bitstream/2027.42/39900/3/wp515.pd

Core-collapse supernovae missed by optical surveys

We estimate the fraction of core-collapse supernovae (CCSNe) that remain undetected by optical SN searches due to obscuration by large amounts of dust in their host galaxies. This effect is especially important in luminous and ultraluminous infrared galaxies, which are locally rare but dominate the star formation at redshifts of z~1-2. We perform a detailed investigation of the SN activity in the nearby luminous infrared galaxy Arp 299 and estimate that up to 83% of the SNe in Arp 299 and in similar galaxies in the local Universe are missed by observations at optical wavelengths. For rest-frame optical surveys we find the fraction of SNe missed due to high dust extinction to increase from the average local value of ~19% to ~38% at z~1.2 and then stay roughly constant up to z~2. It is therefore crucial to take into account the effects of obscuration by dust when determining SN rates at high redshift and when predicting the number of CCSNe detectable by future high-z surveys such as LSST, JWST, and Euclid. For a sample of nearby CCSNe (distances 6-15 Mpc) detected during the last 12 yr, we find a lower limit for the local CCSN rate of 1.5 +0.4/-0.3 x 10^-4 yr^-1 Mpc^-3, consistent with that expected from the star formation rate. Even closer, at distances less than ~6 Mpc, we find a significant increase in the CCSN rate, indicating a local overdensity of star formation caused by a small number of galaxies that have each hosted multiple SNe.Comment: 16 pages, 5 figures, 11 tables, minor changes to match the published versio

Transportation Barriers to Healthcare in Adults 65+ in the Greater Burlington Area

Introduction. Missed appointments often lead to poorer health care outcomes for patients and pose a major economic burden on medical centers. Transportation is an obstacle to accessing medical care for elderly patients in Vermont and results in delayed medical appointments. Methods. We surveyed senior citizens in Chittenden county to determine both the type of transportation barriers and medical care missed due to the lack of transpor- tation. An original survey assessing the impact of transportation to health care was distributed in person and through an online platform. Participants were asked to identify the following in the past year: how often transportation was an issue for healthcare, specific barriers to transportation, and which specific health care appointments were missed due to lack of transportation. Ninety-six surveys out of a total of 251 collected were included in the analysis. Respondents were grouped into either having high transportation barriers, n=43, (always, often, sometimes had issues in the past year), or low transportation barriers, n=53, (rarely had issues). Results. The high barriers group reported more missed appointments, with eye appointments being the most frequent, and depended more on other modes of trans- portation. The low barriers group was able to drive themselves to their appointments more often. Conclusion. The results suggest a trend between barriers to transportation and a lack of access to healthcare appointments. Although more than half of the survey respondents indicated that they do not currently experience transportation barriers, many expressed concern about the transportation difficulties they could encounter in the future.https://scholarworks.uvm.edu/comphp_gallery/1263/thumbnail.jp