On the robustness of least-squares Monte Carlo (LSM) for pricing American derivatives

This paper analyses the robustness of Least-Squares Monte Carlo, a techniquerecently proposed by Longstaff and Schwartz (2001) for pricing Americanoptions. This method is based on least-squares regressions in which theexplanatory variables are certain polynomial functions. We analyze theimpact of different basis functions on option prices. Numerical resultsfor American put options provide evidence that a) this approach is veryrobust to the choice of different alternative polynomials and b) few basisfunctions are required. However, these conclusions are not reached whenanalyzing more complex derivatives.

Iowa Vocational Rehabilitation Services Strategic Plan, 2007-2010

This report outlines the strategic plan for Iowa Vocational Rehabilitation Services, goals and mission.

Location models for ceding market share and shrinking services

New location models are presented here for exploring the reduction of facilities in aregion. The first of these models considers firms ceding market share to competitorsunder situations of financial exigency. The goal of this model is to cede the leastmarket share, i.e., retain as much of the customer base as possible while sheddingcostly outlets. The second model considers a firm essentially without competition thatmust shrink it services for economic reasons. This firm is assumed to close outlets sothat the degradation of service is limited. An example is offered within a competitiveenvironment to demonstrate the usefulness of this modeling approach.

Radial measures of public services deficit for regional allocation of public funds

The goal of this paper is to present an optimal resource allocation model for the regional allocation of public service inputs. Theproposed solution leads to maximise the relative public service availability in regions located below the best availability frontier, subject to exogenous budget restrictions and equality ofaccess for equal need criteria (equity-based notion of regional needs). The construction of non-parametric deficit indicators is proposed for public service availability by a novel application of Data Envelopment Analysis (DEA) models, whose results offer advantages for the evaluation and improvement of decentralised public resource allocation systems. The method introduced in this paper has relevance as a resource allocation guide for the majority of services centrally funded by the public sector in a given country, such as health care, basic and higher education, citizen safety, justice, transportation, environmental protection, leisure, culture, housing and city planning, etc.

Deaf Services Commission of Iowa, Strategic Plan, 2008-2011

This report outlines the strategic plan for Deaf Services Commission of Iowa, goals and mission.

B-1 Monthly Report of Medical Services Provided under Title XIX of the Social Security Act, November 2008.

B-1 Medicaid Reports -- The monthly Medicaid series of eight reports provide summaries of Medicaid eligibles, recipients served, and total payments by county, category of service, and aid category. These reports may also be known as the B-1 Reports. These reports are each available as a PDF for printing or as a CSV file for data analysis. Report Report name IAMM1800-R001--Medically Needy by County - No Spenddown and With Spenddown; IAMM1800-R002--Total Medically Needy, All Other Medicaid, and Grand Total by County; IAMM2200-R002--Monthly Expenditures by Category of Service; IAMM2200-R003--Fiscal YTD Expenditures by Category of Service; IAMM3800-R001--ICF & ICF-MR Vendor Payments by County; IAMM4400-R001--Monthly Expenditures by Eligibility Program; IAMM4400-R002--Monthly Expenditures by Category of Service by Program; IAMM4600-R002--Elderly Waiver Summary by County.

Audit report on the North Iowa Juvenile Detention Services Commission for the year ended June 30, 2008

Audit report on the North Iowa Juvenile Detention Services Commission for the year ended June 30, 2008

The provision on non-audit services by auditors: Let the market evolve and decide

The provision of non-audit services by auditors to their auditclients reduces total costs, increases technical competence and motivates more intense competition. Furthermore, theseservices do not necessarily damage auditor independence nor the quality of non-audit services. This assessment leads to recommending that legislative policy should aim at facilitating the development and use of the safeguardsprovided by the free action of market forces. Regulation should thus aim to enable the parties-audit firms, self-regulatory bodies and audit clients-to discover through competitive market interaction both the most efficient mix of services and the corresponding quality safeguards, adjusting for the costs and benefits of each possibility. Particular emphasis is placed on the role played by fee income diversification and the enhancement, through disclosurerules, of market incentives to diversify.

B-1 Monthly Report of Medical Services Provided under Title XIX of the Social Security Act, December 2008.

B-1 Medicaid Reports -- The monthly Medicaid series of eight reports provide summaries of Medicaid eligibles, recipients served, and total payments by county, category of service, and aid category. These reports may also be known as the B-1 Reports. These reports are each available as a PDF for printing or as a CSV file for data analysis. Report Report name IAMM1800-R001--Medically Needy by County - No Spenddown and With Spenddown; IAMM1800-R002--Total Medically Needy, All Other Medicaid, and Grand Total by County; IAMM2200-R002--Monthly Expenditures by Category of Service; IAMM2200-R003--Fiscal YTD Expenditures by Category of Service; IAMM3800-R001--ICF & ICF-MR Vendor Payments by County; IAMM4400-R001--Monthly Expenditures by Eligibility Program; IAMM4400-R002--Monthly Expenditures by Category of Service by Program; IAMM4600-R002--Elderly Waiver Summary by County.

B-1 Monthly Report of Medical Services Provided under Title XIX of the Social Security Act, January 2009.

B-1 Medicaid Reports -- The monthly Medicaid series of eight reports provide summaries of Medicaid eligibles, recipients served, and total payments by county, category of service, and aid category. These reports may also be known as the B-1 Reports. These reports are each available as a PDF for printing or as a CSV file for data analysis. Report Report name IAMM1800-R001--Medically Needy by County - No Spenddown and With Spenddown; IAMM1800-R002--Total Medically Needy, All Other Medicaid, and Grand Total by County; IAMM2200-R002--Monthly Expenditures by Category of Service; IAMM2200-R003--Fiscal YTD Expenditures by Category of Service; IAMM3800-R001--ICF & ICF-MR Vendor Payments by County; IAMM4400-R001--Monthly Expenditures by Eligibility Program; IAMM4400-R002--Monthly Expenditures by Category of Service by Program; IAMM4600-R002--Elderly Waiver Summary by County.

A retail benchmarking approach to efficient two-way access pricing

We study a retail benchmarking approach to determine access prices for interconnected networks. Instead of considering fixed access charges as in the existing literature, we study access pricing rules that determine the access price that network i pays to network j as a linear function of the marginal costs and the retail prices set by both networks. In the case of competition in linear prices, we show that there is a unique linear rule that implements the Ramsey outcome as the unique equilibrium, independently of the underlying demand conditions. In the case of competition in two-part tariffs, we consider a class of access pricing rules, similar to the optimal one under linear prices but based on average retail prices. We show that firms choose the variable price equal to the marginal cost under this class of rules. Therefore, the regulator (or the competition authority) can choose one among the rules to pursue additional objectives such as consumer surplus, network coverage or investment: for instance, we show that both static and dynamic e±ciency can be achieved at the same time.

The pricing of academic journals: A two-sided market perspective

More and more academic journals adopt an open-access policy, by which articlesare accessible free of charge, while publication costs are recovered through authorfees. We study the consequences of this open access policy on a journal s qualitystandard. If the journal s objective was to maximize social welfare, open accesswould be optimal as long as the positive externalities generated by its diffusionexceed the marginal cost of distribution. However, we show that if an open accessjournal has a different objective (such as maximizing readers payoffs, the impactof the journal or its profit), it tends to choose a quality standard below the sociallyefficient level.

Integração de sistema educativo Cabo-verdiano utilizando Web Services O caso das matrículas

O sistema educativo Cabo-verdiano é um universo constituído por escolas públicas e privadas, do nível pré-escolar ao nível do ensino superior. Dentro desse sistema nós vamos fundamentar os processos administrativos, que foca basicamente o processo de matrícula do aluno, no sistema de ensino vigente, até deixar o sistema, incluindo também o processo de emissão de certificados, visto que no acto das matrículas são requeridas certificados do ano transacto. A proposta de Integração, é a utilização do poder das tecnologias de comunicação e informação para interligar as instituições de ensino, de forma que a matricula dos alunos não seja algo cansativo com elevados processos burocráticos e custoso, para quem quer seguir os seus estudos, e também tornar a gestão do sistema mais simples. O trabalho irá focar basicamente o objecto aluno, e todos os níveis de ensino, porque o aluno é o actor no sistema, quem irá interagir (Inscrever, solicitar, transferir e ser avaliado) nos diversos níveis de ensino. O aluno passa pelos diversos sistemas, na medida que pode passar do sistema de ensino básico, para o ensino secundário ao ensino superior. Contudo o aluno será o mesmo, consequentemente a identidade do aluno será a mesma para os diversos sistemas, o que altera são as avaliações e os planos curriculares, criando um histórico do aluno. Ele tem um ciclo de vida dentro do sistema de ensino. No entanto o estudo permitiu concluir, que o sistema educativo apresenta profundas lacunas no que tange a sua infra-estrutura tecnológica, que lhes permitirá ter mais dinâmica no processo de matrícula e emissão de certificados e na troca de informação entre os estabelecimentos, há dificuldade em criar um histórico do aluno de forma automática com toda a sua avaliação durante o seu ciclo de estudo, do primário ao superior. A proposta de tecnologias de integração entre as instituições, é baseado em métodos, nomeadamente, utilizando Web Services, que é um protocolo simples, que permite a interoperabilidade entre diversos sistemas. Funciona com o protocolo HTTP/HTTPs, que pode ser configurado e acedido facilmente nos Sistemas de Informação. As tecnologias Web constituem um excelente meio de para atingir o objectivo preconizado. Utilizando-as, as escolas poderão construir um sistema (Intranet), que pode ser acedida por todos as escolas e instituições do sistema educativo, com grandes benefícios, quer em termos pedagógicos como administrativo das instituições permitindo assim a partilha das informações internas, melhorando a comunicação entre os vários intervenientes.

B-1 Monthly Report of Medical Services Provided under Title XIX of the Social Security Act, February 2009.

B-1 Medicaid Reports -- The monthly Medicaid series of eight reports provide summaries of Medicaid eligibles, recipients served, and total payments by county, category of service, and aid category. These reports may also be known as the B-1 Reports. These reports are each available as a PDF for printing or as a CSV file for data analysis. Report Report name IAMM1800-R001--Medically Needy by County - No Spenddown and With Spenddown; IAMM1800-R002--Total Medically Needy, All Other Medicaid, and Grand Total by County; IAMM2200-R002--Monthly Expenditures by Category of Service; IAMM2200-R003--Fiscal YTD Expenditures by Category of Service; IAMM3800-R001--ICF & ICF-MR Vendor Payments by County; IAMM4400-R001--Monthly Expenditures by Eligibility Program; IAMM4400-R002--Monthly Expenditures by Category of Service by Program; IAMM4600-R002--Elderly Waiver Summary by County.

B-1 Monthly Report of Medical Services Provided under Title XIX of the Social Security Act, October 2004

B-1 Medicaid Reports -- The monthly Medicaid series of eight reports provide summaries of Medicaid eligibles, recipients served, and total payments by county, category of service, and aid category. These reports may also be known as the B-1 Reports. These reports are each available as a PDF for printing or as a CSV file for data analysis. Report Report name IAMM1800-R001--Medically Needy by County - No Spenddown and With Spenddown; IAMM1800-R002--Total Medically Needy, All Other Medicaid, and Grand Total by County; IAMM2200-R002--Monthly Expenditures by Category of Service; IAMM2200-R003--Fiscal YTD Expenditures by Category of Service; IAMM3800-R001--ICF & ICF-MR Vendor Payments by County; IAMM4400-R001--Monthly Expenditures by Eligibility Program; IAMM4400-R002--Monthly Expenditures by Category of Service by Program; IAMM4600-R002--Elderly Waiver Summary by County.