This book proposes new methods to value equity and model the Markowitz efficient frontier using Markov switching models and provide new evidence and solutions to capture the persistence observed in stock returns across developed and emerging markets.

The new research method presented in this book ensures that all economic theories are falsifiable and that irrefutable theories are scientifically sound. Figueroa combines the logically consistent aspects of Popperian and process epistemologies in his alpha-beta method to address the widespread problem of too-general empirical research methods used in economics. He argues that scientific rules can be applied to economics to make sense of society, but that they must address the complexity of reality as well as the simplicity of the abstract on which hard sciences can rely. Furthermore, because the alpha-beta method combines approaches to address the difficulties of scientifically analyzing complex society, it also extends to other social sciences that have historically relied on empirical methods. This groundbreaking Pivot is ideal for students and researchers dedicated to promoting the progress of scientific research in all social sciences.

This book proposes new tools and models to price options, assess market volatility, and investigate the market efficiency hypothesis. In particular, it considers new models for hedge funds and derivatives of derivatives, and adds to the literature of testing for the efficiency of markets both theoretically and empirically.

Unique blend of asymptotic theory and small sample practice through simulation experiments and data analysis.

Novel reproducing kernel Hilbert space methods for the analysis of smoothing splines and local polynomials. Leading to uniform error bounds and honest confidence bands for the mean function using smoothing splines

Exhaustive exposition of algorithms, including the Kalman filter, for the computation of smoothing splines of arbitrary order.

Spatial Econometrics is a rapidly evolving field born from the joint efforts of economists, statisticians, econometricians and regional scientists. The book provides the reader with a broad view of the topic by including both methodological and application papers. Indeed the application papers relate to a number of diverse scientific fields ranging from hedonic models of house pricing to demography, from health care to regional economics, from the analysis of R&D spillovers to the study of retail market spatial characteristics. Particular emphasis is given to regional economic applications of spatial econometrics methods with a number of contributions specifically focused on the spatial concentration of economic activities and agglomeration, regional paths of economic growth, regional convergence of income and productivity and the evolution of regional employment. Most of the papers appearing in this book were solicited from the International Workshop on Spatial Econometrics and Statistics held in Rome (Italy) in 2006.

This book is a collection of selected papers presented at the Annual Meeting of the European Academy of Management and Business Economics (AEDEM), held at the Faculty of Economics and Business of the University of Barcelona, 05 - 07 June, 2012. This edition of the conference has been presented with the slogan "Creating new opportunities in an uncertain environment". There are different ways for assessing uncertainty in management but this book mainly focused on soft computing theories and their role in assessing uncertainty in a complex world. The present book gives a comprehensive overview of general management topics and discusses some of the most recent developments in all the areas of business and management including management, marketing, business statistics, innovation and technology, finance, sports and tourism. This book might be of great interest for anyone working in the area of management and business economics and might be especially useful for scientists and graduate students doing research in these fields.

Exploring and understanding the analysis of economic development is essential as global economies continue to experience extreme fluctuation. Econometrics brings together statistical methods for practical content and economic relations. Econometric Methods for Analyzing Economic Development is a comprehensive collection that focuses on various regions and their economies at a pivotal time when the majority of nations are struggling with stabilizing their economies. Outlining areas such as employment rates, utilization of natural resources, and regional impacts, this collection of research is an excellent tool for scholars, academics, and professionals looking to expand their knowledge on today s turbulent and changing economy."

This book proposes new methods to build optimal portfolios and to analyze market liquidity and volatility under market microstructure effects, as well as new financial risk measures using parametric and non-parametric techniques. In particular, it investigates the market microstructure of foreign exchange and futures markets.

Statistics for Business and Economics introduces statistics in the context of contemporary business. Emphasising statistical literacy in thinking, the text applies its concepts with real data and uses technology to develop a deeper conceptual understanding. Examples, activities, and case studies foster active learning in the classroom while emphasising intuitive concepts of probability and teaching students to make informed business decisions. The 14th Edition continues to highlight the importance of ethical behaviour in collecting, interpreting, and reporting on data, while also providing a wealth of new and updated exercises and case studies.

The present book deals with coalition games in which expected pay-offs are only vaguely known. In fact, this idea about vagueness of expectations ap pears to be adequate to real situations in which the coalitional bargaining anticipates a proper realization of the game with a strategic behaviour of players. The vagueness being present in the expectations of profits is mod elled by means of the theory of fuzzy set and fuzzy quantities. The fuzziness of decision-making and strategic behaviour attracts the attention of mathematicians and its particular aspects are discussed in sev eral works. One can mention in this respect in particular the book "Fuzzy and Multiobjective Games for Conflict Resolution" by Ichiro Nishizaki and Masatoshi Sakawa (referred below as 43]) which has recently appeared in the series Studies in Fuzziness and Soft Computing published by Physica-Verlag in which the present book is also apperaing. That book, together with the one you carry in your hands, form in a certain sense a complementary pair. They present detailed views on two main aspects forming the core of game theory: strategic (mostly 2-person) games, and coalitional (or cooperative) games. As a pair they offer quite a wide overview of fuzzy set theoretical approaches to game theoretical models of human behaviour."

provide models that could be used by do-it-yourselfers and also can be used toprovideunderstandingofthebackgroundissuessothatonecandoabetter job of working with the (proprietary) algorithms of the software vendors. In this book we strive to provide models that capture many of the - tails faced by ?rms operating in a modern supply chain, but we stop short of proposing models for economic analysis of the entire multi-player chain. In other words, we produce models that are useful for planning within a supply chain rather than models for planning the supply chain. The usefulness of the models is enhanced greatly by the fact that they have been implemented - ing computer modeling languages. Implementations are shown in Chapter 7, which allows solutions to be found using a computer. A reasonable question is: why write the book now? It is a combination of opportunities that have recently become available. The availability of mod- inglanguagesandcomputersthatprovidestheopportunitytomakepractical use of the models that we develop. Meanwhile, software companies are p- viding software for optimized production planning in a supply chain. The opportunity to make use of such software gives rise to a need to understand some of the issues in computational models for optimized planning. This is best done by considering simple models and examples.

Floro Ernesto Caroleo and Francesco Pastore This book was conceived to collect selected essays presented at the session on "The Labour Market Impact of the European Union Enlargements. A New Regional Geography of Europe?" of the XXII Conference of the Italian Association of Labour Economics (AIEL). The session aimed to stimulate the debate on the continuity/ fracture of regional patterns of development and employment in old and new European Union (EU) regions. In particular, we asked whether, and how different, the causes of emergence and the evolution of regional imbalances in the new EU members of Central and Eastern Europe (CEE) are compared to those in the old EU members. Several contributions in this book suggest that a factor common to all backward regions, often neglected in the literature, is to be found in their higher than average degree of structural change or, more precisely, in the hardship they expe- ence in coping with the process of structural change typical of all advanced economies. In the new EU members of CEE, structural change is still a consequence of the continuing process of transition from central planning to a market economy, but also of what Fabrizio et al. (2009) call the "second transition," namely that related to the run-up to and entry in the EU.

This book covers recent advances in efficiency evaluations, most notably Data Envelopment Analysis (DEA) and Stochastic Frontier Analysis (SFA) methods. It introduces the underlying theories, shows how to make the relevant calculations and discusses applications. The aim is to make the reader aware of the pros and cons of the different methods and to show how to use these methods in both standard and non-standard cases. Several software packages have been developed to solve some of the most common DEA and SFA models. This book relies on R, a free, open source software environment for statistical computing and graphics. This enables the reader to solve not only standard problems, but also many other problem variants. Using R, one can focus on understanding the context and developing a good model. One is not restricted to predefined model variants and to a one-size-fits-all approach. To facilitate the use of R, the authors have developed an R package called Benchmarking, which implements the main methods within both DEA and SFA. The book uses mathematical formulations of models and assumptions, but it de-emphasizes the formal proofs - in part by placing them in appendices -- or by referring to the original sources. Moreover, the book emphasizes the usage of the theories and the interpretations of the mathematical formulations. It includes a series of small examples, graphical illustrations, simple extensions and questions to think about. Also, it combines the formal models with less formal economic and organizational thinking. Last but not least it discusses some larger applications with significant practical impacts, including the design of benchmarking-based regulations of energy companies in different European countries, and the development of merger control programs for competition authorities.

The editors are pleased to offer the following papers to the reader in recognition and appreciation of the contributions to our literature made by Robert Engle and Sir Clive Granger, winners of the 2003 Nobel Prize in Economics. The basic themes of this part of Volume 20 of Advances in Econometrics are time varying betas of the capital asset pricing model, analysis of predictive densities of nonlinear models of stock returns, modelling multivariate dynamic correlations, flexible seasonal time series models, estimation of long-memory time series models, the application of the technique of boosting in volatility forecasting, the use of different time scales in GARCH modelling, out-of-sample evaluation of the Fed Model in stock price valuation, structural change as an alternative to long memory, the use of smooth transition auto-regressions in stochastic volatility modelling, the analysis of the balanced-ness of regressions analyzing Taylor-Type rules of the Fed Funds rate, a mixture-of-experts approach for the estimation of stochastic volatility, a modern assessment of Clives first published paper on Sunspot activity, and a new class of models of tail-dependence in time series subject to jumps.
*This Series: Aids in the diffusion of new econometric techniques
* Emphasis is placed on expositional clarity and ease of assimilation for readers who are unfamiliar with a given topic of a volume
*Illustrates new concepts

The book aims at perfecting the national governance system and improving national governance ability. It evaluates the balance sheets of the state and residents, non-financial corporations, financial institutions and the central bank, the central government, local government and external sectors - the goal being to provide a systematic analysis of the characteristics and trajectory of China's economic expansion and structural adjustment, as well as objective assessments of short and long-term economic operations, debt risks and financial risks with regard to the institutional and structural characteristics of economic development in market-oriented reform. It puts forward a preliminary analysis of China's national and sectoral balance sheets on the basis of scientific estimates of various kinds of data, analyzes from a new perspective the major issues that are currently troubling China - development sustainability, government transformation, local government debt, welfare reform, and the financial opening-up and stability - and explores corresponding policies, measures, and institutional arrangements.

In the 2nd edition some sections of Part I are omitted for better readability, and a brand new chapter is devoted to volatility risk. As a consequence, hedging of plain-vanilla options and valuation of exotic options are no longer limited to the Black-Scholes framework with constant volatility.

In the 3rd printing of the 2nd edition, the second Chapter on discrete-time markets has been extensively revised. Proofs of several results are simplified and completely new sections on optimal stopping problems and Dynkin games are added. Applications to the valuation and hedging of American-style and game options are presented in some detail.

The theme of stochastic volatility also reappears systematically in the second part of the book, which has been revised fundamentally, presenting much more detailed analyses of the various interest-rate models available: the authors' perspective throughout is that the choice of a model should be based on the reality of how a particular sector of the financial market functions, never neglecting to examine liquid primary and derivative assets and identifying the sources of trading risk associated. This long-awaited new edition of an outstandingly successful, well-established book, concentrating on the most pertinent and widely accepted modelling approaches, provides the reader with a text focused on practical rather than theoretical aspects of financial modelling.

In the era of Big Data our society is given the unique opportunity to understand the inner dynamics and behavior of complex socio-economic systems. Advances in the availability of very large databases, in capabilities for massive data mining, as well as progress in complex systems theory, multi-agent simulation and computational social science open the possibility of modeling phenomena never before successfully achieved. This contributed volume from the Perm Winter School address the problems of the mechanisms and statistics of the socio-economics system evolution with a focus on financial markets powered by the high-frequency data analysis.

The editors are pleased to offer the following papers to the reader in recognition and appreciation of the contributions to our literature made by Robert Engle and Sir Clive Granger, winners of the 2003 Nobel Prize in Economics. The basic themes of this part of Volume 20 of Advances in Econometrics are time varying betas of the capital asset pricing model, analysis of predictive densities of nonlinear models of stock returns, modelling multivariate dynamic correlations, flexible seasonal time series models, estimation of long-memory time series models, the application of the technique of boosting in volatility forecasting, the use of different time scales in GARCH modelling, out-of-sample evaluation of the Fed Model in stock price valuation, structural change as an alternative to long memory, the use of smooth transition auto-regressions in stochastic volatility modelling, the analysis of the balanced-ness of regressions analyzing Taylor-Type rules of the Fed Funds rate, a mixture-of-experts approach for the estimation of stochastic volatility, a modern assessment of Clives first published paper on Sunspot activity, and a new class of models of tail-dependence in time series subject to jumps.
*This Series: Aids in the diffusion of new econometric techniques
*Emphasis is placed on expositional clarity and ease of assimilation for readers who are unfamiliar with a given topic of a volume
*Illustrates new concepts

Panel data econometrics has evolved rapidly over the last decade. Dynamic panel data estimation, non-linear panel data methods and the phenomenal growth in non-stationary panel data econometrics makes this an exciting area of research in econometrics. The 11th international conference on panel data held at Texas A&M University, College Station, Texas, June 2004, witnessed about 150 participants and 100 papers on panel data. This volume includes some of the papers presented at that conference and other solicited papers that made it through the refereeing process. "Contributions to Economic Analysis" was established in 1952. The series purpose is to stimulate the international exchange of scientific information. The series includes books from all areas of macroeconomics and microeconomics.

This is an open access title available under the terms of a CC BY-NC-ND 4.0 International licence. It is free to read at Oxford Academic and offered as a free PDF download from OUP and selected open access locations. In October 2019, Abhijit Banerjee, Esther Duflo, and Michael Kremer jointly won the 51st Sveriges Riksbank Prize in Economic Sciences in Memory of Alfred Nobel "for their experimental approach to alleviating global poverty." But what is the exact scope of their experimental method, known as randomized control trials (RCTs)? Which sorts of questions are RCTs able to address and which do they fail to answer? The first of its kind, Randomized Control Trials in the Field of Development: A Critical Perspective provides answers to these questions, explaining how RCTs work, what they can achieve, why they sometimes fail, how they can be improved and why other methods are both useful and necessary. Bringing together leading specialists in the field from a range of backgrounds and disciplines (economics, econometrics, mathematics, statistics, political economy, socioeconomics, anthropology, philosophy, global health, epidemiology, and medicine), it presents a full and coherent picture of the main strengths and weaknesses of RCTs in the field of development. Looking beyond the epistemological, political, and ethical differences underlying many of the disagreements surrounding RCTs, it explores the implementation of RCTs on the ground, outside of their ideal theoretical conditions and reveals some unsuspected uses and effects, their disruptive potential, but also their political uses. The contributions uncover the implicit worldview that many RCTs draw on and disseminate, and probe the gap between the method's narrow scope and its success, while also proposing improvements and alternatives. Without disputing the contribution of RCTs to scientific knowledge, Randomized Control Trials in the Field of Development warns against the potential dangers of their excessive use, arguing that the best use for RCTs is not necessarily that which immediately springs to mind. Written in plain language, this book offers experts and laypeople alike a unique opportunity to come to an informed and reasoned judgement on RCTs and what they can bring to development.

This book addresses the need for a high-level analysis of unit roots and cointegration. "Time Series, Unit Roots, and Cointegration" integrates the theory of stationary sequences and issues arising in the estimation of their parameters, distributed lags, spectral density function, and cointegration. The book also includes topics that are important for understanding recent developments in the estimation and testing of cointegrated nonstationary sequences, such as Brownian motion, stochastic integration, and central limit theorems. It explores an important topic in time-series econometrics. It addresses the need for a high-level analysis of unit roots and cointegration. It is written by an excellent expositor.

The present book is the offspring of my Habilitation, which is the key to academic tenure in Austria. Legal requirements demand that a Ha bilitation be published and so only seeing it in print marks the real end of this biographical landmark project. From a scientific perspective I may hope to finally reach a broader audience with this book for a criti cal appraisal of the research done. Aside from objectives the book is a reflection of many years of research preceding Habilitation proper in the field of efficiency measurement. Regarding the subject matter the main intention was to fill an important remaining gap in the efficiency analysis literature. Hitherto no technique was available to estimate output-specific efficiencies in a statistically convincing way. This book closes this gap, although some desirable improvements and generalizations of the proposed estimation technique may yet be required, before it will eventually establish as standard tool for efficiency analysis. The likely audience for this book includes professional researchers, who want to enrich their tool set for applied efficiency analysis, as well as students of economics, management science or operations research, in tending to learn more about the potentials of rigorously understood efficiency analysis. But also managers or public officials potentially or dering efficiency studies should benefit from the book by learning about the extended capabilities of efficiency analysis. Just reading the intro duction may change their perception of value for money when it comes to comparative performance measurement."

Experimental economists are leaving the reservation. They are recruiting subjects in the field rather than in the classroom, using field goods rather than induced valuations, and using field context rather than abstract terminology in instructions. This volume examines the methodology of field experiments, and offers a wide array of applications of field experiments.

The methodological issues revolve around the ability of field experimenters to ensure the same degree of control that lab experimenters claim. The applications cover issues such as risk and time preferences of the Danish population, savings decisions of the Canadian working poor, differences between the social preferences of American students and workers, the effect of educational vouchers on American school children, and differences in bargaining behavior across nations. This volume serves as an introduction to the issues and applications of this new area of experimental economics.

This book provides new evidence on the magnitude and sources of pay inequalities between women and men in European countries and New Zealand on the basis of micro data. Particular attention is devoted to job access and workplace practices, promotions and wage growth, sectoral affiliation and rent-sharing, and unobserved heterogeneity and dynamics.

"General-equilibrium" refers to an analytical approach which looks at the economy as a complete system of inter-dependent components (industries, households, investors, governments, importers and exporters). "Applied" means that the primary interest is in systems that can be used to provide quantitative analysis of economic policy problems in particular countries. Reflecting the authors' belief in the models as vehicles for practical policy analysis, a considerable amount of material on data and solution techniques as well as on theoretical structures has been included. The sequence of chapters follows what is seen as the historical development of the subject.

The book is directed at graduate students and professional economists who may have an interest in constructing or applying general equilibrium models. The exercises and readings in the book provide a comprehensive introduction to applied general equilibrium modeling. To enable the reader to acquire hands-on experience with computer implementations of the models which are described in the book, a companion set of diskettes is available.