Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Comparing the effects of behaviorally informed interventions on flood insurance demand: an experimental analysis of ‘boosts’ and ‘nudges’

Abstract This paper compares the effects of two types of behaviorally informed policy – nudges and boosts – that are designed to increase consumer demand for insurance against low-probability, high-consequence events. Using previous findings in the behavioral sciences literature, this paper constructs and implements two nudges (an ‘informational’ and an ‘affective’ nudge) and a statistical numeracy boost and then elicits individual risk beliefs and demand for flood insurance using a contingent valuation survey of 331 participants recruited from an online labor pool. Using a two-limit Tobit model to estimate willingness to pay (WTP) for flood insurance, this paper finds that the affective and informational nudges result in increases in WTP for flood insurance of roughly $21/month and $11/month relative to the boost, respectively. Taken together, the findings of this paper suggest that nudges are the more effective behaviorally informed policy in this setting, particularly when the nudge design targets the affect and availability heuristics; however, additional research is necessary to establish sufficient conditions for this conclusion.
The battle of Bruges: Margaret Thatcher, the foreign office and the unravelling of British European policy

ABSTRACT Drawing on newly released archival material, this article reassesses Margaret Thatcher’s 1988 Bruges speech, widely depicted to have instigated Britain's drift towards Brexit. It opens by giving an essential recap of the main contents of the speech. Next, the article explains why and how we use the address as a prism through which to see Thatcher's European policy-making in action. The third section tells how the speech was written to show how intra-government fault lines began to surface in its earliest incarnations. We then process trace to the two main battles publicly rehearsed at Bruges: over the Conservative Party's approach to European integration (fourth section); and, reinforcing this, over the desirability of an Anglo-American reading of British history in which ‘Europe’ occupied a subordinate place (fifth section). Our central claim is that the study of political speeches, including the speechwriting process, can be a compelling addition to our accounts of the ways in which politicians frame policy dilemmas, debate them behind the scenes and manage their political communication to achieved desired policy objectives, in this case opening up Britain's place in ‘Europe’ for domestic discussion. We therefore contribute to three overlapping domains of inquiry: Thatcher's foreign and European policy decision-making; the Conservative Party and European integration leading to Brexit; and finally, speeches as tools for policy-making and agenda setting.
Why and How Commercial Marketing Should Promote Sufficient Consumption: A Systematic Literature Review

Although marketing strategies are often accused of stimulating overconsumption, businesses increasingly show potential as enablers of sufficiency. The concept of sufficiency contributes to sustainable development through the absolute reduction of resources and energy used for consumption by questioning the level of demand. This study analyzes reasons and potential practices for commercial marketing to promote sufficiency through a systematic literature review of scientific publications, guided by the following research questions: Why should commercial marketing promote sufficiency? How can commercial marketing promote sufficiency? Which barriers for promoting sufficiency occur? The content-based study of 17 publications in the final review sample delivers recommendations for how to practically implement marketing for sufficiency, and theoretical considerations for strengthening the discourse within macromarketing and beyond.
Evaluating Recommendation Algorithms Based on U-I Matrix Property Analysis

Recent years, recommender systems are more and more important for solving information overload problem. They sort through massive data to provide users with personalized content and services. Most researchers focus on designing new algorithms to increase the performance of recommender systems. However, some open challenges stand: Why the performance of an algorithm on different data sets can vary quite a lot? Which property of the data set influences the accuracy of the algorithms? In this thesis, we introduce methodologies to investigate the impact of user-item interactions properties on the accuracy of classical collaborative filtering recommendation algorithms. Firstly, we propose to characterize U-I matrix properties from three domains: network topology, spectrum and information domains. Furthermore, we design several network modification algorithms to systematically modify basic topology properties of a given U-Imatrix to create more U-Imatrices. Meanwhile, the properties of the spectrum and information domains are also changed as topological features are modified. We finally evaluated several classical collaborative filtering algorithms on a large number of U-I matrices and explore which properties in the three domains can influence or better explain the accuracy of the algorithms. We find that the effect of U-I matrix properties on the accuracy of recommendation algorithms is approximately consistent across various data sets. We identify two properties from the network topology and information domain respectively that could better explain the accuracy of algorithms. Understanding how U-I matrix properties affect the accuracy of algorithms has practical significance. The recommender system designers can estimate and explain the accuracy of their recommender systems and are inspired in the design of policies to orient the user item interactions such that the accuracy of their recommendation algorithms could be improved.
Intergenerational Programs and Practices in China: Results Based on a Web Search Method

ABSTRACT In the midst of an aging population trend and increased concerns about elder care, the Chinese government has developed policies that aim to strengthen family support systems and ensure older adult engagement in community life. One domain of related intervention that has received relatively little attention and systematic study in China is in the area of intergenerational programming. To gain a sense of the breadth and types of intergenerational programs emerging in China, the authors employed a web search method utilizing Google and Baidu search engines. Findings indicate a fair amount of program innovation and diversity as well as a need for additional programmatic and policy measures to strengthen and support intergenerational relationships in family and community contexts.
Methods in Text Mining for Diagnostic Radiology

Methods in Text Mining for Diagnostic Radiology by EAMON BENJAMIN JOHNSON Information extraction from clinical medical text is a challenge in computing to bring structure to the prose produced for communication in medical practice. In diagnostic radiology, prose reports are the primary means for communication of image interpretation to patients and other physicians, yet secondary use of the report requires either costly review by another radiologist or machine interpretation. In this work, we present mechanisms for improving machine interpretation of domain-speci c text with large scale semantic analysis, using a corpus of 726,000 real-world radiology reports as a basis for experimentation. We examine the abstract conceptual problem of detection of incidental ndings (uncertain or unexpected results) in imaging study reports. We demonstrate that classi ers incorporating semantic metrics can outperform F-measure of prior methods for follow-up classi cation and also outperform F-measure of incidental ndings classi cation by physicians in-clinic (0.689 versus 0.648). Further, we propose two semantic metrics, focus and divergence, as calculated over the SNOMED-CT ontology graph, for summarization and projection of discrete report concepts into 2-dimensional space which enables both machine classi cation and physician interpretation of classi cations. With understanding of the utility of semantic metrics for classi cation, we present methods for enhancing extraction of semantic information from clinical corpora. First, we construct a zero-knowledge method for imputation of semantic class for unlabeled terms through maximization of a con dence factor computed using pairwise co-occurrence statistics and rules limiting recall. Experiments with our method on corpora of reduced Mandelbrot information temperature produce accurate labeling of up to 25% of terms not labeled by prior methods. Second, we propose a method for context-sensitive quanti cation of relative concept salience and an algorithm capable of increasing both salience and diversity of concepts in document summaries in 28% of reports.
Working on Keeping it Together: Exploring the Lived Experience of Precarious Employment in Rural Ontario

WORKING ON KEEPING IT TOGETHER: EXPLORING THE LIVED EXPERIENCE OF PRECARIOUS EMPLOYMENT IN RURAL ONTARIO Valencia Gaspard Advisor University of Guelph, 2019 Dr. Al Lauzon Precarious employment is often experienced as contract work, involuntary parttime work, low wage work, and self-employment. There is a well-developed body of literature pointing to negative health, economic, and social impacts related to precarious employment in urban centres, while little consideration has been given to the particularities that may make a rural precarious employment experience different. The goal of this exploratory research project is to understand the experience of being precariously employed in rural Ontario. Nineteen unstructured individual interviews with rural Ontarians experiencing rural precarious employment were conducted. The phenomenon of rural precarious employment was distinguished by five themes (financial, health, self-view, social, and system) emergent through phenomenology. The phenomenon encompassed experiences of poverty, decreased health, negative selfviews, social struggles, and marginalization from support public systems. Unpacking precarious employment in rural Ontario from the experience of workers has significance for both rural scholars and policy makers. Rural scholars benefit from a better understanding of precarious employment as an experience in rural areas, and the addition of lived rural experiences to the precarious employment literature advances the understanding of urban bias in scholarship. This research provides provincial policy
125 Years of Time-Varying Effects of Fiscal Policy on Financial Markets

This paper examines the effect of fiscal policy on financial markets over a long span of 125 years. Unlike existing studies that mainly focus on monetary policy shocks and model-based identification of fiscal policy shocks, we use a time-varying model to study the effect of fiscal policy with much cleaner and direct identification of fiscal policy shocks. In addition, we extend our analysis by measuring the response volatility in these markets and separately study the effects of good and bad components of volatility. We find significant time-variation in the response of stock and bond market returns and volatility. The overall response of the stock market exceeds that of bond markets, with more pronounced effects in the pre-1950 period than in the last six decades. Fiscal consolidation generates long-term benefits that positively affect financial markets in the latter part of the 20th century, thus providing new insights into the dynamic role of fiscal policy.
How Handheld Mobile Device Size and Hand Location May Affect Divided Attention

Previous research demonstrates that people increasingly utilize multiple displays along with mobile devices simultaneously, and that this split in attention has detrimental effects on goal-directed behavior. However, few studies have assessed the impact of the physical attributes of mobile devices–including dimensions, weight and screen size–on attention. Understanding how device dimensions and screen size affect attention is an important first step in creating safety guidelines for high risk industries that utilize displays, such as automotive and aeronautics engineering. The aim of this work is to determine to what extent the display dimensions and screen size of mobile devices influence attention. To explore this question, participants interacted with mobile devices of varying sizes while performing a change detection task on a stationary device located behind and above the mobile device. Results of this study suggest that those using a smaller mobile device achieved higher performance on the background change detection task than those using a larger device, while having similar performance in the mobile device task. This work demonstrates that when attention is divided, larger displays may be more attentionally demanding. We recommend that when users or designers are required to consider multitasking between a foreground and background task, in order to optimize background performance they should utilize smaller foreground displays.
Moving towards Smart Sustainable Communities A Systematic Literature Review

Land-use planning, urban smart housing, and urban transport are important determinants for green space policies. The ecosystem service approach has helped scholars to attract policy attention to these benefits, but the concept remains poorly implemented in urban policy and governance. Within this context, what is needed is a bridge between ecosystem services and policy processes. This can be accomplished through Multi-Criteria Decision Analysis (MCDA) as a decision support tool. Research in Land Use & Urban Governance will also need to investigate whether the two trends of increased digitization within governance and increased participatory mechanisms. This will help develop a more robust understanding of the institutional, technological and social conditions that act as barriers or incentives for inclusion, via the lens of empirical cases both situated within Sri Lanka and Sweden. It draws on the concept of “Citizen Observatories” that is gaining traction within the academic community focusing on GIS and Urban Planning. By fostering collective interaction between different stakeholders, citizen observatories provide communities with increased influence in decision making, allowing them to contribute first-hand to key economic, social and environmental issues. To investigate this issue broadly and scientifically, the ‘Systematic Review’ was conducted. It would pave the way for completing this task successfully. This review included both Sri Lankan Journal of Real Estate Department of Estate Management and Valuation University of Sri Jayewardenepura 39 quantitative and qualitative research articles conducted to investigate the research questions, research designs, methodologies adopted, etc. in the field of urban planning with special reference to smart, sustainable communities.
Entrepreneurs’ Competencies and Competitive Advantages: A Study on Malaysian Microenterprises

Considering the significance of relevant competencies towards business success and the dependency of socio-economical vulnerable micro-entrepreneurs on their enterprise income, this study examined the effect of entrepreneurs’ competencies (i.e., opportunity recognizing competency, strategic competency, organizing competency, relationship competency, conceptual competency and commitment competency) on the competitive advantage of microenterprises in Malaysia. This study adopted a cross-sectional research design and collected quantitative data from 300 randomly selected respondents from Peninsular Malaysia. The findings revealed significant positive effects of organizing and commitment competency on the competitive advantage with a significantly negative effect of relationship competency on the competitive advantage. Apart from enriching the current literature, this study offers significant policy implications for the government and socio-developmental organizations in Malaysia for improving the micro-entrepreneurship and uplifting large low-income groups from poverty.
Structural Equation Model Analysis of Factors Influencing Entrepreneurial Interest among University Students in Saudi Arabia

Reduction of unemployment for the young Saudis is one of the major targets of the government in Saudi Vision 2030, and entrepreneurship has been recognized as one of the ways to influence business start-ups which then generates employment and sustainable growth. This study examines students’ entrepreneurial interest within the context of the theory of planned behaviour. A survey was conducted from public and private universities in the eastern province of Saudi Arabia using multi-stage sampling technique whereby 743 questionnaires were retrieved. The results of the study using correlation analysis revealed that demographic factors, specifically age, present level of study, parent’s background in business, and succession factor in parents business have positive and significant relations with the student’s entrepreneurial interest. A structural equation model analysis further revealed that social norm has positive and significant influence on student entrepreneurial interest; student attitude toward behaviour has a direct and indirect positive and significant influence on entrepreneurial interest; whereas self-efficacy and university environment have positive and insignificant influence on entrepreneurial interest. There is a need for the government to create more awareness and support for entrepreneurship as well as challenging the universities to improve the level of formal enterprise education given the students by providing the academic and the business supports to generate ideas, start and nurture a new business in the entrepreneurship centre within the university.
Microelectronics Revolution

The Microelectronics Revolution is a comprehensive guide to the silicon chip revolution and its impact on society. The distinguished contributors to this volume explain in turn the origins and nature of microelectronics, the characteristics of the burgeoning microchip industry and the increasing use of microprocessors in everyday products.The book details the impact of this new technology on society in separate chapters which take up automation on the factory floor, the word-processing revolution in the office, the consequences for employment, and the implications for industrial relations. A final section discusses the problems of a microelectronic age -- 'the information society. 'With a discerning guide to further reading at the end of each chapter, this book forms a basis of management, trade union, and college courses on society and the new technology.
Factors Influencing Smartphone Adoption: A Study in the Indian Bottom of the Pyramid Context

The usage of smartphones is increasing with each passing day. The growth of wireless subscription in India in the last 5 years is very high. However, the penetration rate of smartphones among low-income people is significantly low. Looking at the near saturation and high competition of markets at the higher side of the economic pyramid, companies are trying to explore the segment of low-income people termed ‘Bottom of the Pyramid’ (BOP). In order to explore the BOP market for smartphones, one needs to realize the factors influencing the adoption of smartphones at the BOP. Our study explores these factors with reference to the existing literature of technology adoption. A theoretical framework is proposed and tested with 266 valid data points. Structural equation modelling (SEM) is used to test the proposed framework. The empirical analysis revealed that ‘performance expectancy’, ‘effort expectancy’ and ‘perceived monetary value’ have a positive impact on the ‘behavioural intention’ of using smartphones at BOP. ‘Smartphone anxiety’ and ‘smartphone self-efficacy’ are found to have an impact on ‘effort expectancy’.
The Experiences of Black Students at a Predominantly White, Faith-Based Institution

Black students are attending Predominantly White Institutions (PWIs) in greater numbers each year (Aries, 2008). Simultaneously, they are facing unique obstacles that have the potential to either impede persistence or affect success (Davis, et al. 2004; Greer & Chwalisz, 2007). Understanding the perceptions of the Black student population at a given institution is extremely valuable in implementing necessary change. Focus groups were used to garner the experiences of 23 Black students, staff, and faculty at a faithbased, PWI relating to their perceived sense of belonging and perceptions of the campus racial climate. Participants reported challenges and obstacles throughout their experiences as well as a variety of responses that are important to acknowledge and understand. Findings from this study present implications necessary for the future success of students of color at PWIs, especially for those institutions of similar racial makeup.
Singularity property and singularity-free path planning of the Gough–Stewart parallel mechanism

Singularity affects the performance of the parallel mechanisms seriously and so should be avoided as the mechanisms work. It is necessary to obtain the distribution of the singularity locus in the task space of a parallel mechanism and then further explore singularity avoidance. This article mainly deals with the singularity-free path planning of the widely used Gough–Stewart parallel mechanism. After obtaining the characteristics of the position-singularity locus for a constant orientation and the orientation-singularity locus for a given position, the position-singularity path planning and orientation-singularity path planning are explored, respectively. For the position-singularity path planning, after obtaining the position-singularity locus equation and analyzing the geometric property of the position-singularity curve in a moving plane, a general method for identifying the probability of existence of a singularity-free path connecting two given points in the moving plane is illustrated, and then the technique of the singularity-free path planning is also represented in case if a singularity-free path exists. For the orientation-singularity path planning, the orientation kinematic equation and the time optimal orientation path of a rigid body are constructed using the quaternion algebra theory, respectively. After analyzing the orientation-singularity locus and using the results of time optimal orientation path of a rigid body, the method of time optimal orientation path planning of the mechanism is investigated. The validation of the aforementioned methods of two types of singularity-free path is tested and verified by applying numerical examples. The research has important theoretical significance and practical reference value for the exploration of the singularity avoidance of the parallel mechanism.
Forecasting of electricity price through a functional prediction of sale and purchase curves

This work proposes a new approach for the prediction of the electricity price based on forecasting aggregated purchase and sale curves. The basic idea is to model the hourly purchase and the sale curves, to predict them and to find the intersection of the predicted curves in order to obtain the predicted equilibrium market price and volume. Modeling and forecasting of purchase and sale curves is performed by means of functional data analysis methods. More specifically, parametric (FAR) and nonparametric (NPFAR) functional autoregressive models are considered and compared to some benchmarks. An appealing feature of the functional approach is that, unlike other methods, it provides insights into the sale and purchase mechanism connected with the price and demand formation process and can therefore be used for the optimization of bidding strategies. An application to the Italian electricity market (IPEX) is also provided, showing that NPFAR models lead to a statistically significant improvement in the forecasting accuracy.