Search results for " utility"
showing 10 items of 74 documents
Analysis of some renewable energy uses and demand side measures for hotels on small Mediterranean islands: A case study
2018
Abstract Tourist activity strongly influences the energy consumption and the overall load profile of communities with isolated energy systems. One example is hotel sectors on small islands that are not connected to mainland energy distribution grids. The use of solar energy systems could be a smart option for reducing energy consumption and tackling seasonal fluctuation. The operation of a weak and isolated electric grid requires attention to the management of power profiles in very short time frames. Energy storage (thermal or electric), as well as building automation control technologies, can be utilised for these aims. In this context, the present paper illustrates a study conducted at a…
Changes in Health Utility, Disability, and Health-Related Quality of Life in Patients After Spinal Fusion
2014
STUDY DESIGN Prospective longitudinal database study. OBJECTIVE To evaluate changes in health utility, disability, and health-related quality of life (HRQOL) in patients undergoing spinal fusion. SUMMARY OF BACKGROUND DATA Recently, measuring disability, HRQOL, and health utility has become important when defining the value of surgical interventions. METHODS Data of spinal fusion patients from a prospective longitudinal database were analyzed. Health utility was captured by SF-6D (six dimensional health state classification from the 36-dimensional Short Form Health Survey) score, disability by Oswestry Disability Index, and HRQOL by the 36-Item Short Form Health Survey. The changes in these…
Car sharing demand estimation and urban transport demand modelling using stated preference techniques
2008
The research deals with the use of the stated preference technique (SP) and transport demand modelling to analyse travel mode choice behaviour for commuting urban trips in Palermo, Italy. The principal aim of the study was the calibration of a demand model to forecast the modal split of the urban transport demand, allowing for the possibility of using innovative transport systems like car sharing and car pooling. In order to estimate the demand model parameters, a specific survey was carried out inside the urban area of Palermo. The survey focused on the morning rush hour and involved mainly employees, self-employed workers and students (about 500 respondents) whose final destination was lo…
Collective and Cooperative Behaviour Models
2016
International audience; In modelling residential choice we cannot escape the debate about the effect of societal context on an individual’s decision-making. This debate depends on whether we set more store by the aggregate scale of society or by the individual’s decision-making. An individual-centred approach will focus on the particularities of an individual and the way her past, for example, influences her decisions.
The shape of small sample biases in pricing kernel estimations
2016
AbstractNumerous empirical studies find pricing kernels that are not-monotonically decreasing; the findings are at odds with the pricing kernel being marginal utility of a risk-averse, so-called representative agent. We study in detail the common procedure which estimates the pricing kernel as the ratio of two separate density estimations. In the first step, we analyse theoretically the functional dependence for the ratio of a density to its estimated density; this cautions the reader regarding potential computational issues coupled with statistical techniques. In the second step, we study this quantitatively; we show that small sample biases shape the estimated pricing kernel, and that est…
Constrained consensus for bargaining in dynamic coalitional TU games
2011
We consider a sequence of transferable utility (TU) games where, at each time, the characteristic function is a random vector with realizations restricted to some set of values. We assume that the players in the game interact only with their neighbors, where the neighbors may vary over time. The main contributions of the paper are the definition of a robust (coalitional) TU game and the development of a distributed bargaining protocol. We prove the convergence with probability 1 of the bargaining protocol to a random allocation that lies in the core of the robust game under some mild conditions on the players' communication graphs.
Genomic Testing for Human Health and Disease Across the Life Cycle: Applications and Ethical, Legal, and Social Challenges
2019
The expanding use of genomic technologies encompasses all phases of life, from the embryo to the elderly, and even the posthumous phase. In this paper, we present the spectrum of genomic healthcare applications, and describe their scope and challenges at different stages of the life cycle. The integration of genomic technology into healthcare presents unique ethical issues that challenge traditional aspects of healthcare delivery. These challenges include the different definitions of utility as applied to genomic information; the particular characteristics of genetic data that influence how it might be protected, used and shared; and the difficulties applying existing models of informed con…
Money in an Estimated Business Cycle Model of the Euro Area
2006
We present maximum likelihood estimates of a small scale dynamic general equilibrium model for the Eurozone. We pay special attention to the role of money, both through its direct effect upon private agents’ decisions and as a component of the monetary policy rule. Our results can be summarized as follows. First, we find no direct effect of money upon inflation and output but money growth plays a significant role in the interest rate rule. Second, money demand shocks mainly help to forecast real balances while real shocks explain the bulk of price, output and interest rates fluctuations. Third, the estimated model predicts sensible conditional correlations among those variables both to dema…
Optimal hedging under biased energy futures markets
2020
Abstract Optimal futures hedging positions for those agents trying to maximize their expected utility will depend on their view about the evolution of the market and on how risk adverse they are. The most risk adverse agents will probably decide to full-cover their positions. But when a futures bias exists, hedgers with moderate or low degree of risk aversion can alter their strategy depending on the expected gains in futures markets. In our application to the UK natural gas market, we find a statistically significant time-varying negative futures bias that can be forecasted with confidence. As a result of this bias, most effective and best performing hedging strategies for moderate risk-av…
Portfolio performance evaluation with generalized Sharpe ratios: Beyond the mean and variance
2009
The main purpose of this paper is to present a theoretically sound portfolio performance measure that takes into account higher moments of the distribution of returns. First, we perform a study of the investor's preferences to higher moments of distribution within expected utility theory and discuss the performance measurement. To illustrate the investor's preferences to higher moments and the computation of a performance measure, we provide an approximation analysis of the optimal capital allocation problem and derive a formula for the Sharpe ratio adjusted for skewness of distribution. This performance measure justifies the notion of the Generalized Sharpe Ratio (GSR) introduced by Hodges…