Conventional Performance Measures Research Articles

Performance Of Leveraged Asset Funds

Leverage plays an important role in the practice of today's portfolio management industry. Leverage can be part of the funds' investment policy, long term strategy, or can be employed to meet temporary liquidity demand. Although the non-normality created by leverage is much the same than those created by options, its effects on the fund's performance are still not widely discussed. The present paper investigates the ranking characteristics of conventional and non-conventional performance measures, when evaluating leveraged portfolios. Because most asset funds contain some level of leverage, we focus on 1) whether the overall used performance measures as well as particular alternative measures account correctly for the (additional) non-normality, created by the capital structure decision, and 2) whether using leverage leads to superior performance. Within an experimental analysis, based on simulated and real data return distributions, a number of alternative methods are employed to analyze the ranking characteristics of different performance measures on asset funds with and without leverage. Using expected utility as benchmark, we compare conventional composite measures like the Sharpe Ratio, the Sortino Ratio, etc., as well as performance measures based on the use of replicating portfolios as in Berenyi (2001): the Excess Return, Modified Sharpe Ratio and the Efficiency Ratio. Rank correlations between the rankings with expected utility (with varying risk parameter) and those of performance measures are calculated. Our results show that, with some reservations, the non-traditional performance measures can handle the non-normality resulting from leverage better. Following this, also the consistency of those performance measures is investigated. In addition, we investigated whether there exist a difference in results between the full-portfolio-maximizing and equity-value-maximizing strategies.

The effects of patient characteristics and practice settings on students' participation in a primary care clerkship.

To explore the effects of practice, patient, and encounter variables on students' participation in a third-year primary care clerkship. In 1995-96, 154 students, randomly assigned to ambulatory teaching sites, completed for each patient encounter a scannable card indicating the patient's age range, gender, and insurance type, the setting of care, the type of visit, whether it was a repeat or first visit to the student, and the student's level of participation. Conventional measures of students' satisfaction (post-clerkship survey) and performance (preceptor ratings, USMLE Step 2, standardized-patient examination scores) were examined. The students reported significantly higher levels of participation for patient encounters taking place in clinic and emergency room settings than for those in private offices; for repeat rather than for first visits; for patients over 12 years old than for those 12 years old or younger; and for sick visits rather than for follow-ups or checkups. Students' participation had a modestly positive correlation with students' satisfaction and performance. Several practice and patient variables influence the level of students' participation in the care of ambulatory patients. The strongest predictor of active student participation is the clinical setting of the encounter. Monitoring students' self-reported levels of participation is an important tool for tracking the impact of practice variability on the quality of the learning environment in ambulatory clerkships.

Moral Reasoning as a Predictor of Clinical Practice: The Development of Physical Therapy Students Across the Professional Curriculum

ABSTRACT The purpose of this study was to test the relationship between moral reasoning, as demonstrated on the Defining Issues Test (DIT), and clinical performance of physical therapist students. Moral reasoning was also tested against eight admission variables as predictors of clinical performance. Subjects were 58 physical therapist students (II male, 47 female) enrolled in three programs. The DIT was administered to all subjects during their first week in the programs. Clinical performance ratings were collected at the conclusion of the students' first clinical affiliation. Participating programs agreed to use the Clinical Competence Scale as the clinical performance instrument. Data quality analysis was conducted to assess consistent application of the evaluation instrument by clinical instructors. Statistical procedures were conducted in three clusters of analysis: (1) Pearson product moment correlation coefficients computed for interval variables and clinical performance ratings, (2) multiple regression of clinical performance with moral reasoning (DIT), including an indicator variable for a qualitative factor clinical setting type, and (3) chi-square test with moral reasoning and clinical performance each distributed into three levels (high, medium, low). An alpha level of. 05 was used to test for significance. Moral reasoning (DIT) was the only variable to demonstrate a significant relationship with clinical performance (r=.28). Multiple regression of clinical per/ormance with moral reasoning, with facility type as a covariant, was significant (r=.44), accounting for 19.4% of the variance. Chi-square analysis resulted in a significant difference from expected frequency for the defined levels of moral reasoning and clinical performance. These find ings are consistent with previous research in medicine and nursing supporting moral reasoning as a predictor of clinical performance. As professional health care providers, physical therapists must possess the necessary moral reasoning skills and perspectives to recognize and resolve ethical dilemmas in clinical practice. In addition, the literature supports a link between the ability to resolve ethical conflicts and the ability to effectively manage complex practice issues. Understanding the relationship between moral reasoning and effective clinical practice is important in designing physical therapy curricula and supporting the development of students. INTRODUCTION The evolution of physical therapy toward professional autonomy requires that physical therapists expertly and efficiently evaluate patients and manage their care within an increasingly complex health care environment. 1-3 The successful physical therapist possesses the knowledge and clinical skills prescribed in professional competencies4 as well as the ability to synthesize, evaluate, and prioritize complex elements of patient management.2 Professional practice also includes the expectation that physical therapists will be morally accountable for this expertise and responsive to the ethical issues frequently occurring in physical therapy practices-8 The expansion of managed care, with increased oversight by financing agencies and incentives for controlling costs, virtually ensures the presence of ethical problems for providers as they attempt to balance patient need, professional obligations, and organizational expectations.9,10 Thus, competence in physical therapy includes the moral reasoning skills and perspectives necessary to recognize and address these ethical issues. The challenge for physical therapy educators is to understand and develop strategies for selecting and preparing students to function at this professional level. A variety of admission criteria are used by physical therapy programs to select those candidates who can be expected to succeed in the academic curriculum and ultimately in professional practice. While these admission criteria are useful in predicting student performance in the academic components of the curriculum, studies have demonstrated little or no correlation between conventional admission criteria and measures of performance in the clinical setting. …

Destined for success? Educational biographies of academically able pupils

The research reported here has explored the different pathways and prospects of a group of young people considered to have been ‘destined for success’. The 347 men and women involved in this research were all identified as ‘academically able’ when, in the mid‐1980s, they joined 18 different secondary schools that ranged from inner‐city comprehensives to some of the most prestigious independent schools in the country. Their retrospective accounts provide a unique opportunity to explore the extent to, and the manner in, which early educational ‘promise’ is translated through a variety of pathways into further opportunities and educational destinations. Questionnaire and interview data gathered from them in their mid‐20s reveal that, in terms of conventional measures of performance, most have fulfilled their educational promise irrespective of the type of school attended. The majority of our respondents have pursued the ‘prime trajectory’ for young people through A levels into higher education and then out into professional and managerial occupations. Beneath this apparent homogeneity, however, are complex interrelationships between background and school type that have contributed to differentiated experiences and prospects. Although there are significant within‐sector differences and ‘success’ was by no means guaranteed, the highly selective and academically oriented independent schools that comprised our sample from the private sector seem to have provided a more certain pathway to high‐status educational and occupational destinations than either the state grammar schools or the state comprehensives. Students who went to independent schools were more than twice as likely to go to elite universities than those who went to state schools. The importance of attending high‐status universities, rather than any university, is evident in the close connection between rank of higher‐education institution attended and occupational status. Attending an elite university appeared to give access to a broader range of professional and managerial occupations at higher levels than attending less prestigious universities.

Corporate Governance, Expected Operating Performance, and Pricing

We examine whether ownership and governance characteristics are associated with the firm’s operating performance and stock price. We hypothesize that while ownership structure and governance mechanisms impact the firm's operating performance, they can also impact stakeholders’ abilities to expropriate rents from other stakeholders. We use a two-step estimation approach to assess whether the benefit of a better governance system manifest itself as higher operating performance or a premium on share price. To mitigate potential problems from using conventional accounting performance measures, we use Ohlson’s (1995) expected residual income (ERI) valuation metric which incorporates the expected operating performance of the firm. Results suggest that (1) higher share ownership of the CEO, corporate insiders, and outside directors has a strong positive association with both firm performance (measured by the ERI metric) and market value; (2) large ownership of outside shareholders has a negative association with the firm’s operating performance; (3) presence of a controlling shareholder is negatively related to market value; (4) after controlling for ownership, there is no improvement in operating performance or share value from having greater representation of outside directors, or having a larger board; and (5) variables representing the CEO’s stature – the CEO’s tenure and the board chairmanship – have a negative association with operating performance or market value.

Evaluation of Two Self-Managed Rest Break Systems for VDT Users

Two self-managed rest break systems for video display terminal (VDT) users were evaluated using measures of heart rate and heart rate variability, breathing, and work-physiological synchronization in addition to conventional measures of performance, mood, user acceptance, and musculoskeletal discomfort. Undergraduate typists (N=30) entered lines of randomized words during a 55-min work period. Cognitive demand was increased by having typists reverse-type a specified word in each line. In the feedback condition, typists were continuously informed of the discrepancy between a target rest break standard of 30 s every 8 min and their discretionary rest breaks. This feedback information was absent in the control condition. Management of discretionary rest breaks was better in the feedback condition and VDT users reported less task disruption and lower back discomfort. Time-related trends in performance and physiological response reflected behavioral changes associated with fatigue, but did not differentiate between experimental conditions. The lack of adverse psychophysiological responses in the feedback condition supports the conclusion that continuous feedback about rest break behavior can help VDT users self-manage discretionary rest breaks, with no untoward effects on performance or well-being.

Equal‐likelihood decision making with limited information

Performance measures are examined for a detector‐estimator based on an equal‐likelihood signal probability model [N. R. Davis and R. Pitre, 978–992 and 993–1005 (1995)]. With limited integration time and SNR, detection and parameter estimation analysis based solely on estimation of cumulants is incomplete. Conventional performance measures like pfa and uncertainty measures such as cost uncertainty and decision information loss are examined as a function of integration time and estimation resolution. [Work sponsored by ONR(NRL).]

Objective evaluation of human and computational stereoscopic visual systems

Several computational models have been proposed to account for the abilities of human observers in solving the stereo correspondence problem. Such models are often evaluated by counting the number of correct matches that the model makes when presented with a test stimulus, but this measure is difficult to compare with conventional psychophysical measures of human stereo performance. This paper develops an absolute comparison of human and model stereo correspondence by using the concept of statistical efficiency, through which the performance of both humans and models is compared against that of an ideal observer. Some important assumptions need to be examined before the efficiencies of human and model can be compared because these assumptions affect the statistical performance of models. One assumption involves the use of an epipolar constraint to help constrain the matching problem but it is unclear what the resolution (or “height”) of an epipolar line should be. Experimental estimates were obtained of the vertical region over which dot position may be varied without disruption of human stereoacuity. These estimates constrained the effective “height” of the zone above and below an epipolar line. Two models of stereopsis were then compared against human performance: the first (due to Pollard, Mayhew & Frisby, Perception, 14, 449–470, 1985) uses local constraints to solve the correspondence problem; the second is a simple area-based correlation model. For nearly all the stimuli tested, both models show strong similarities with human observers. For one particular stimulus, the efficiency of the correlation model is different from that of humans and of the PMF algorithm. This implies that a more complex process than simple correlation may be required to account for human stereo processing and indicates other limitations of correlation models.

IN SEARCH OF EXCELLENT MANAGEMENT

ABSTRACTDespite important advances in recent years, no agreement exists concerning what constitutes management excellence. Specific knowledge of how managerial behaviour is perceived and evaluated by others will help to resolve unsettled questions about what is meant by management excellence and improve the actual decisions of managers. This article examines the determinants of managerial excellence as perceived by corporate CEOs, directors, and financial analysts in Fortune magazine's annual survey of the best‐managed American firms in 33 industries. While the firms perceived to be best managed are more profitable and less risky, and grow faster and reward their stockholders more than less well‐managed firms, these variables explain only about 30 per cent of the variance in management ratings. the firms perceived to be best managed have more involvement in international markets and research and development, while large firm size and firm diversification reflect negatively upon perceived managerial quality. the relative inability of conventional financial measures of firm performance to explain perceptions of managerial excellence underlines the complex nature both of these perceptions and strategic behaviour. the results support Varadarajan and Ramanujam's conclusion that excellent management depends upon a diverse set of competencies and values, as well as Chakravarthy's contention that the most important characteristic of firm performance is management's ability to transform the firm and adapt to a rapidly changing environment. By contrast, little support is found for the maximization of stockholder wealth criterion of Rappaport.

Performance simulation of a token ring

Most of performance studies for local area networks (LANs) have been based upon the average transmission time of a packet (or frame) as a performance criterion. Those models have been developed for the performance measure of the low-level physical and data link layers of LANs. They predict the relative efficiency of different network topologies, transmission media, and access protocols. However, they often fail to measure an end-user's message transmission time. A realistic performance measure for end-users should attempt to measure the average transmission time of the entire user message. The authors concentrate on the performance of a token ring LAN system for a users' view. A simulator has been developed to quantitatively measure the elapsed time of an end-user's message. Simulation results show that the performance of the network with the exhaustive service (ES) strategy is much better than that of the network which works with the non-exhaustive service (NES) strategy. Also, the measure based on user messages is compared with the conventional performance measure based on packets and shows differences in performance measurement. >

Life insurance companies as investment managers: New implications for consumers

This paper examines the attractiveness of the equity portfolios of life insurance companies as an alternative investment to mutual funds. In particular, this study analyzes the risk-adjusted investment performance of the stock portfolios of life insurance companies, attributable to their stock selection and market timing abilities. Using conventional measures of risk-adjusted portfolio performance, we find that life insurance companies exhibit performance similar to mutual funds. The evidence suggests that the life insurance companies, like their mutual fund counterparts, fail to exhibit differential stock selection or market timing abilities that are statistically significant. While the risk-adjusted investment performance of the two investment vehicles is similar, the variable annuity contracts of life insurance companies may offer an edge over mutual funds due to their ability to defer taxes.

On the localization performance measure and optimal edge detection

The localization performance measure of edge detectors is addressed. A one-dimensional formulation of the problem is considered. A linear space-invariant filter is used for the detection. The locations of local maxima in the thresholded output of the filter are declared to be the edges. The limitations of conventional performance measures are shown, and a localization performance measure for edge detection is suggested. This performance measure is based on the theory of zero-crossings of stochastic processes. It is shown that the derivative of a Gaussian is the optimal edge detector for the measure. >

Software congestion, mobile servers, and the hyperbolic model

The phenomenon of software congestion is examined. The term refers to situations in which the performance bottleneck of a system is an element of software, rather than a hardware device. Software congestion can occur in any system which contains one or more elements of software whose services may be simultaneously desired by multiple clients, but which can service only one client at a time. It is shown that the use of models which ignore software congestion can produce results that are completely irrelevant to actual system behavior. Furthermore, software congestion is frequently invisible to conventional performance measurement tools. A notational scheme, called mobile servers representation, is introduced for describing those systems in which software congestion may be important. An approximate analytical model, called the hyperbolic model, is developed for analyzing systems with software congestion. >

Mutual Fund Performance Evaluation: A Comparison of Benchmarks and Benchmark Comparisons

ABSTRACTThe authors' main goal in this paper is to ascertain whether conventional measures of abnormal mutual fund performance are sensitive to the benchmark chosen to measure normal performance. They employ the standard CAPM benchmarks and a variety of APT benchmarks to investigate this question. They find little similarity between the absolute and relative mutual fund rankings obtained from these alternative benchmarks, which suggests the importance of knowing the appropriate model for risk and return in this context. In addition, the rankings are not insensitive to the method used to construct the APT benchmark. Finally, they find statistically significant measured abnormal performance using all the benchmarks. The economic explanation for this phenomenon appears to be an open question.

Eye and Head Response to an Attention Cue in a Dual Task Paradigm

Eight subjects were used to characterize eye and head movements in response to a cue to refixate. The subjects' tasks were to complete a centrally located task and identify vertically peripheral targets. Eye and head reaction time as well as conventional performance measures were recorded. The results showed that the eye and head movement pattern obtained with vertically displaced targets was not identical with those previously obtained with horizontally displaced targets. The results also indicated that eye reaction time, with hard tracking, increases the farther a target is vertically displaced from the centrally located task and head reaction time decreases with the presence of a verbal cue prior to target presentation. Manual reaction time did not, however, decrease with a cue. These results suggest that such unobtrusive measures may be valuable in the design of attention cueing systems.

Coupling effects and performance in viligance tasks.

The performance of 32 subjects on 90-min. auditory and visual vigilance tasks were measured in conventional and theory of signal detection indices as a function of “coupling,” sense mode, and time on task. Order effects, correlations between sense modes, and possible effects of observing responses were also examined. Regardless of the coupling condition or sense mode involved, β increased while hits and false alarms decreased as time on task increased. There was no significant decline in d' over time on task for either sense mode or coupling conditions. In general, conventional measures of performance were similar for the auditory and visual tasks. Significant cross-modality correlations were obtained for false alarms, latency, and β values. No order effects were observed. The results are discussed in terms of expectancy theory and an observing response model.

Psychological and Physiological Skill Development - A Control Engineering Model

The application of servomechanism models to description of human control behavior in either manual or physiological control has generally proceeded by creating circumstances under which behavior would be time stationery in .?n engineering sense over the duration cf the measurementsRemarkably effective stationary steady state models were achieved and applied with considerable success to the design of complex man-machine control systems. Little attention was paid to defining the behavior whereby the human operator, acting in concert with 3 machine, achieves higher .levels: of performance as training progresses. An early attack on this question was made by Krendel and McRuer in 1960.The problem is that conventional performance measures for human manual control or physiological control, interpreted in an invariant closed-loop configuration, are either relatively insensitive to human learning behavior or are inappropriate and misleading. A restructuring of the control configurations to enable the extracting of coherence and regularities from the input structures, either physically or conceptually, is the core of the model presented. Experimental data from many sources are presented to substantiate the model, and implications for system design and training are explored.

The analysis of breed differences in maze performance in dogs

1. 1. The subjects were 222 puppies of five pure breeds, tested at 13 weeks of age. 127 were chosen for a special statistical study. 2. 2. The apparatus consisted of a T maze especially designed for dogs, with transparent wire mesh walls. The pattern was 1, R, 2 L, 3 R and the reverse, 1 L, 2 R, 3 L. 3. 3. The subjects were tested once per day for a 10-day period receiving a food reward on emerging from the maze. 4. 4. Thirteen different performance measures based on time and error scores were subjected to analysis of variance. Ten of these measures showed significant differences attributable to breeds. 5. 5. In general, basenjis performed better on the first day than other breeds. Beagles made the best over-all performance, and shelties the poorest. 6. 6. Eleven factors thought to influence performance, including size and sex as well as several variable factors in the social and physical environment, were statistically analysed in the same way. Eight of these showed significant differences between breeds. 7. 7. The effect of the same “background variables” upon the maze performance scores was studied by analysis of covariance. All but one showed low but significant correlation with the performance variables. 8. 8. Some of the background variables themselves have a true hereditary basis, particularly those involving size and confidence. 9. 9. When the variance due to correlation with background variables was removed, six of the performance variables still showed significant differences between breeds. 10. 10. The tendency to form or not form stereotyped habits appears to be a trait directly related to the central nervous system and one little effected by background variables. Other measures of performance appear to reflect either motivational traits or patterns of behaviour characteristic of the breed. The conventional measures of performance do not directly measure basic breed characteristics. The effects of basic traits depend upon interaction with other traits, and the same trait may produce opposite effects at different times, e.g. high motivation in the beagle tends to produce poor initial performance but excellent final performance.