Bayesian Statistical Methods provides data scientists with the foundational and computational tools needed to carry out a Bayesian analysis. This book focuses on Bayesian methods applied routinely in practice including multiple linear regression, mixed effects models and generalized linear models (GLM). The authors include many examples with complete R code and comparisons with analogous frequentist procedures. In addition to the basic concepts of Bayesian inferential methods, the book covers many general topics: Advice on selecting prior distributions Computational methods including Markov chain Monte Carlo (MCMC) Model-comparison and goodness-of-fit measures, including sensitivity to priors Frequentist properties of Bayesian methods Case studies covering advanced topics illustrate the flexibility of the Bayesian approach: Semiparametric regression Handling of missing data using predictive distributions Priors for high-dimensional regression models Computational techniques for large datasets Spatial data analysis The advanced topics are presented with sufficient conceptual depth that the reader will be able to carry out such analysis and argue the relative merits of Bayesian and classical methods. A repository of R code, motivating data sets, and complete data analyses are available on the book's website. Brian J. Reich, Associate Professor of Statistics at North Carolina State University, is currently the editor-in-chief of the Journal of Agricultural, Biological, and Environmental Statistics and was awarded the LeRoy & Elva Martin Teaching Award. Sujit K. Ghosh, Professor of Statistics at North Carolina State University, has over 22 years of research and teaching experience in conducting Bayesian analyses, received the Cavell Brownie mentoring award, and served as the Deputy Director at the Statistical and Applied Mathematical Sciences Institute.

In January 2005, the German government enacted a substantial reform of the welfare system, the so-called "Hartz IV reform." This book evaluates key characteristics of the reform from a microeconometric perspective. It investigates whether a centralized or decentralized organization of welfare administration is more successful to integrate welfare recipients into employment. Moreover, it analyzes the employment effects of an intensified use of benefit sanctions and evaluates the effectiveness and efficiency of the most frequently assigned Active Labor Market Programs. The analyses have a focus on immigrants, who are highly over-represented in the German welfare system. "

Focuses on the assumptions underlying the algorithms rather than their statistical properties Presents cutting-edge analysis of factor models and finite mixture models. Uses a hands-on approach to examine the assumptions made by the models and when the models fail to estimate accurately Utilizes interesting real-world data sets that can be used to analyze important microeconomic problems Introduces R programming concepts throughout the book. Includes appendices that discuss many of the concepts introduced in the book, as well as measures of uncertainty in microeconometrics.

This book deals with the application of wavelet and spectral methods for the analysis of nonlinear and dynamic processes in economics and finance. It reflects some of the latest developments in the area of wavelet methods applied to economics and finance. The topics include business cycle analysis, asset prices, financial econometrics, and forecasting. An introductory paper by James Ramsey, providing a personal retrospective of a decade's research on wavelet analysis, offers an excellent overview over the field.

Dynamic factor models (DFM) constitute an active and growing area of research, both in econometrics, in macroeconomics, and in finance. Many applications lie at the center of policy questions raised by the recent financial crises, such as the connections between yields on government debt, credit risk, inflation, and economic growth. This volume collects a key selection of up-to-date contributions that cover a wide range of issues in the context of dynamic factor modeling, such as specification, estimation, and application of DFMs. Examples include further developments in DFM for mixed-frequency data settings, extensions to time-varying parameters and structural breaks, for multi-level factors associated with subsets of variables, in factor augmented error correction models, and in many other related aspects. A number of contributions propose new estimation procedures for DFM, such as spectral expectation-maximization algorithms and Bayesian approaches. Numerous applications are discussed, including the dating of business cycles, implied volatility surfaces, professional forecaster survey data, and many more.

Following the recent publication of the award winning and much acclaimed "The New Palgrave Dictionary of Economics," second edition which brings together Nobel Prize winners and the brightest young scholars to survey the discipline, we are pleased to announce "The New Palgrave Economics Collection." Due to demand from the economics community these books address key subject areas within the field. Each title is comprised of specially selected articles from the Dictionary and covers a fundamental theme within the discipline. All of the articles have been specifically chosen by the editors of the Dictionary, Steven N.Durlauf and Lawrence E.Blume and are written by leading practitioners in the field. The Collections provide the reader with easy to access information on complex and important subject areas, and allow individual scholars and students to have their own personal reference copy.

Originally published in 1971, this is a rigorous analysis of the economic aspects of the efficiency of public enterprises at the time. The author first restates and extends the relevant parts of welfare economics, and then illustrates its application to particular cases, drawing on the work of the National Board for Prices and Incomes, of which he was Deputy Chairman. The analysis is developed stage by stage, with the emphasis on applicability and ease of comprehension, rather than on generality or mathematical elegance. Financial performance, the second-best, the optimal degree of complexity of price structures and problems of optimal quality are first discussed in a static framework. Time is next introduced, leading to a marginal cost concept derived from a multi-period optimizing model. The analysis is then related to urban transport, shipping, gas and coal. This is likely to become a standard work of more general scope than the authors earlier book on electricity supply. It rests, however, on a similar combination of economic theory and high-level experience of the real problems of public enterprises.

This book scientifically tests the assertion that accommodative monetary policy can eliminate the "crowd out" problem, allowing fiscal stimulus programs (such as tax cuts or increased government spending) to stimulate the economy as intended. It also tests to see if natural growth in th economy can cure the crowd out problem as well or better. The book is intended to be the largest scale scientific test ever performed on this topic. It includes about 800 separate statistical tests on the U.S. economy testing different parts or all of the period 1960 - 2010. These tests focus on whether accommodative monetary policy, which increases the pool of loanable resources, can offset the crowd out problem as well as natural growth in the economy. The book, employing the best scientific methods available to economists for this type of problem, concludes accommodate monetary policy could have, but until the quantitative easing program, Federal Reserve efforts to accommodate fiscal stimulus programs were not large enough to offset more than 23% to 44% of any one year's crowd out problem. That provides the science part of the answer as to why accommodative monetary policy didn't accommodate: too little of it was tried. The book also tests whether other increases in loanable funds, occurring because of natural growth in the economy or changes in the savings rate can also offset crowd out. It concludes they can, and that these changes tend to be several times as effective as accommodative monetary policy. This book's companion volume Why Fiscal Stimulus Programs Fail explores the policy implications of these results.

The proliferation of financial derivatives over the past decades, options in particular, has underscored the increasing importance of derivative pricing literacy among students, researchers, and practitioners. Derivative Pricing: A Problem-Based Primer demystifies the essential derivative pricing theory by adopting a mathematically rigorous yet widely accessible pedagogical approach that will appeal to a wide variety of audience. Abandoning the traditional "black-box" approach or theorists' "pedantic" approach, this textbook provides readers with a solid understanding of the fundamental mechanism of derivative pricing methodologies and their underlying theory through a diversity of illustrative examples. The abundance of exercises and problems makes the book well-suited as a text for advanced undergraduates, beginning graduates as well as a reference for professionals and researchers who need a thorough understanding of not only "how," but also "why" derivative pricing works. It is especially ideal for students who need to prepare for the derivatives portion of the Society of Actuaries Investment and Financial Markets Exam. Features Lucid explanations of the theory and assumptions behind various derivative pricing models. Emphasis on intuitions, mnemonics as well as common fallacies. Interspersed with illustrative examples and end-of-chapter problems that aid a deep understanding of concepts in derivative pricing. Mathematical derivations, while not eschewed, are made maximally accessible. A solutions manual is available for qualified instructors. The Author Ambrose Lo is currently Assistant Professor of Actuarial Science at the Department of Statistics and Actuarial Science at the University of Iowa. He received his Ph.D. in Actuarial Science from the University of Hong Kong in 2014, with dependence structures, risk measures, and optimal reinsurance being his research interests. He is a Fellow of the Society of Actuaries (FSA) and a Chartered Enterprise Risk Analyst (CERA). His research papers have been published in top-tier actuarial journals, such as ASTIN Bulletin: The Journal of the International Actuarial Association, Insurance: Mathematics and Economics, and Scandinavian Actuarial Journal.

Microsimulation Modelling involves the application of simulation methods to micro data for the purposes of evaluating the effectiveness and improving the design of public policy. The field has existed for over 50 years and has been applied to many different policy areas and is a methodology that is applied within both government and academia. This handbook brings together leading authors in the field to describe and discuss the main current issues within the field. The handbook provides an overview of current developments across each of the sub-fields of microsimulation modelling such as tax-benefit, pensions, spatial, health, labour, consumption, transport and land use policy as well as macro-micro, environmental and demographic issues. It focuses also on the modelling different micro units such as households, firms and farms. Each chapter discusses its sub-field under the following headings: the main methodologies of the sub-field; survey the literature in the area; critique the literature; and propose future directions for research within the sub-field.

The book entitled "Agricultural Statistics" has been designed for all U.G. and P.G. Students of "Pure Statistics, Agricultural Statistics, Biological & Social Sciences" and those who have to appear in competitive examinations of I.S.S., S.S.S., State's P.S.C.' and I.A.S. This book is also useful for faculties of "Department of Statistics" of Indian Universities. The book is the outcome of 28 years of teaching experience of U.G., P.G. and Ph. D. students of different disciplines of Agriculture, Agil. Engg. and Agril. Statistics. in J.N.K.V.V. Jabalpur. The content of the book covers the syllabus on the topic "Statistical Methods.

A careful basic theoretical and econometric analysis of the factors determining the real exchange rates of Canada, the U.K., Japan, France and Germany with respect to the United States is conducted. The resulting conclusion is that real exchange rates are almost entirely determined by real factors relating to growth and technology such as oil and commodity prices, international allocations of world investment across countries, and underlying terms of trade changes. Unanticipated money supply shocks, calculated in five alternative ways have virtually no effects. A Blanchard-Quah VAR analysis also indicates that the effects of real shocks predominate over monetary shocks by a wide margin. The implications of these facts for the conduct of monetary policy in countries outside the U.S. are then explored leading to the conclusion that all countries, to avoid exchange rate overshooting, have tended to automatically follow the same monetary policy as the United States. The history of world monetary policy is reviewed along with the determination of real exchange rates within the Euro Area.

In this book leading German econometricians in different fields present survey articles of the most important new methods in econometrics. The book gives an overview of the field and it shows progress made in recent years and remaining problems.

This book provides the reader with user-friendly applications of normal distribution. In several variables it is called the multinormal distribution which is often handled using matrices for convenience. The author seeks to make the arguments less abstract and hence, starts with the univariate case and moves progressively toward the vector and matrix cases. The approach used in the book is a gradual one, going from one scalar variable to a vector variable and to a matrix variable. The author presents the unified aspect of normal distribution, as well as addresses several other issues, including random matrix theory in physics. Other well-known applications, such as Herrnstein and Murray's argument that human intelligence is substantially influenced by both inherited and environmental factors, will be discussed in this book. It is a better predictor of many personal dynamics - including financial income, job performance, birth out of wedlock, and involvement in crime - than are an individual's parental socioeconomic status, or education level, and deserve to be mentioned and discussed.

This book provides in-depth analyses on accounting methods of GDP, statistic calibers and comparative perspectives on Chinese GDP. Beginning with an exploration of international comparisons of GDP, the book introduces the theoretical backgrounds, data sources, algorithms of the exchange rate method and the purchasing power parity method and discusses the advantages, disadvantages, and the latest developments in the two methods. This book further elaborates on the reasons for the imperfections of the Chinese GDP data including limitations of current statistical techniques and the accounting system, as well as the relatively confusing statistics for the service industry. The authors then make suggestions for improvement. Finally, the authors emphasize that evaluation of a country's economy and social development should not be solely limited to GDP, but should focus more on indicators of the comprehensive national power, national welfare, and the people's livelihood. This book will be of interest to economists, China-watchers, and scholars of geopolitics.

This is Volume 24 of the monograph series International Symposia in Economic Theory and Econometrics. ISETE publishes proceedings of conferences and symposia, as well as research monographs of the highest quality and importance. All articles published in these volumes are refereed relative to the standards of the best journals, therefore not all papers presented at related symposia are published in these proceedings volumes. The topics chosen for these volumes are those of particular research importance at the time of the selection of the topic.

China's reform and opening-up have contributed to its long-term and rapid economic development, resulting in a much stronger economic strength and much better life for its people. Meanwhile, the deepening economic integration between China and the world has resulted in an increasingly complex environment, growing influencing factors and severe challenges to China's economic development. Under the "new normal" of the Chinese economy, accurate analysis of the economic situation is essential to scientific decision-making, sustainable and healthy economic development and to build a moderately prosperous society in all respects. By applying statistical and national economic accounting methods, and based on detailed statistics and national economic accounting data, this book presents an in-depth analysis of the key economic fields, such as real estate economy, automotive industry, high-tech industry, investment, opening-up, income distribution of residents, economic structure, balance of payments structure and financial operation, since the reform and opening-up, especially in recent years. It aims to depict the performance and characteristics of these key economic fields and their roles in the development of national economy, thus providing useful suggestions for economic decision-making, and facilitating the sustainable and healthy development of the economy and the realization of the goal of building a moderately prosperous society in all respects.

Co-integration, equilibrium and equilibrium correction are key concepts in modern applications of econometrics to real world problems. This book provides direction and guidance to the now vast literature facing students and graduate economists. Econometric theory is linked to practical issues such as how to identify equilibrium relationships, how to deal with structural breaks associated with regime changes and what to do when variables are of different orders of integration.

Managers are often under great pressure to improve the performance of their organizations. To improve performance, one needs to constantly evaluate operations or processes related to producing products, providing services, and marketing and selling products. Performance evaluation and benchmarking are a widely used method to identify and adopt best practices as a means to improve performance and increase productivity, and are particularly valuable when no objective or engineered standard is available to define efficient and effective performance. For this reason, benchmarking is often used in managing service operations, because service standards (benchmarks) are more difficult to define than manufacturing standards. Benchmarks can be established but they are somewhat limited as they work with single measurements one at a time. It is difficult to evaluate an organization's performance when there are multiple inputs and outputs to the system. The difficulties are further enhanced when the relationships between the inputs and the outputs are complex and involve unknown tradeoffs. It is critical to show benchmarks where multiple measurements exist. The current book introduces the methodology of data envelopment analysis (DEA) and its uses in performance evaluation and benchmarking under the context of multiple performance measures.

"Students of econometrics and their teachers will find this book to be the best introduction to the subject at the graduate and advanced undergraduate level. Starting with least squares regression, Hayashi provides an elegant exposition of all the standard topics of econometrics, including a detailed discussion of stationary and non-stationary time series. The particular strength of the book is the excellent balance between econometric theory and its applications, using GMM as an organizing principle throughout. Each chapter includes a detailed empirical example taken from classic and current applications of econometrics."--Dale Jorgensen, Harvard University

""Econometrics" will be a very useful book for intermediate and advanced graduate courses. It covers the topics with an easy to understand approach while at the same time offering a rigorous analysis. The computer programming tips and problems should also be useful to students. I highly recommend this book for an up-to-date coverage and thoughtful discussion of topics in the methodology and application of econometrics."--Jerry A. Hausman, Massachusetts Institute of Technology

""Econometrics" covers both modern and classic topics without shifting gears. The coverage is quite advanced yet the presentation is simple. Hayashi brings students to the frontier of applied econometric practice through a careful and efficient discussion of modern economic theory. The empirical exercises are very useful. . . . The projects are carefully crafted and have been thoroughly debugged."--Mark W. Watson, Princeton University

""Econometrics" strikes a good balance between technical rigor and clear exposition. . . . The use of empiricalexamples is well done throughout. I very much like the use of old 'classic' examples. It gives students a sense of history--and shows that great empirical econometrics is a matter of having important ideas and good data, not just fancy new methods. . . . The style is just great, informal and engaging."--James H. Stock, John F. Kennedy School of Government, Harvard University

Oil and gas industries apply several techniques for assessing and mitigating the risks that are inherent in its operations. In this context, the application of Bayesian Networks (BNs) to risk assessment offers a different probabilistic version of causal reasoning. Introducing probabilistic nature of hazards, conditional probability and Bayesian thinking, it discusses how cause and effect of process hazards can be modelled using BNs and development of large BNs from basic building blocks. Focus is on development of BNs for typical equipment in industry including accident case studies and its usage along with other conventional risk assessment methods. Aimed at professionals in oil and gas industry, safety engineering, risk assessment, this book Brings together basics of Bayesian theory, Bayesian Networks and applications of the same to process safety hazards and risk assessment in the oil and gas industry Presents sequence of steps for setting up the model, populating the model with data and simulating the model for practical cases in a systematic manner Includes a comprehensive list on sources of failure data and tips on modelling and simulation of large and complex networks Presents modelling and simulation of loss of containment of actual equipment in oil and gas industry such as Separator, Storage tanks, Pipeline, Compressor and risk assessments Discusses case studies to demonstrate the practicability of use of Bayesian Network in routine risk assessments

This book provides an up-to-date series of advanced chapters on applied financial econometric techniques pertaining the various fields of commodities finance, mathematics & stochastics, international macroeconomics and financial econometrics. Financial Mathematics, Volatility and Covariance Modelling: Volume 2 provides a key repository on the current state of knowledge, the latest debates and recent literature on financial mathematics, volatility and covariance modelling. The first section is devoted to mathematical finance, stochastic modelling and control optimization. Chapters explore the recent financial crisis, the increase of uncertainty and volatility, and propose an alternative approach to deal with these issues. The second section covers financial volatility and covariance modelling and explores proposals for dealing with recent developments in financial econometrics This book will be useful to students and researchers in applied econometrics; academics and students seeking convenient access to an unfamiliar area. It will also be of great interest established researchers seeking a single repository on the current state of knowledge, current debates and relevant literature.

Solve the DVA/FVA Overlap Issue and Effectively Manage Portfolio Credit Risk Counterparty Risk and Funding: A Tale of Two Puzzles explains how to study risk embedded in financial transactions between the bank and its counterparty. The authors provide an analytical basis for the quantitative methodology of dynamic valuation, mitigation, and hedging of bilateral counterparty risk on over-the-counter (OTC) derivative contracts under funding constraints. They explore credit, debt, funding, liquidity, and rating valuation adjustment (CVA, DVA, FVA, LVA, and RVA) as well as replacement cost (RC), wrong-way risk, multiple funding curves, and collateral. The first part of the book assesses today's financial landscape, including the current multi-curve reality of financial markets. In mathematical but model-free terms, the second part describes all the basic elements of the pricing and hedging framework. Taking a more practical slant, the third part introduces a reduced-form modeling approach in which the risk of default of the two parties only shows up through their default intensities. The fourth part addresses counterparty risk on credit derivatives through dynamic copula models. In the fifth part, the authors present a credit migrations model that allows you to account for rating-dependent credit support annex (CSA) clauses. They also touch on nonlinear FVA computations in credit portfolio models. The final part covers classical tools from stochastic analysis and gives a brief introduction to the theory of Markov copulas. The credit crisis and ongoing European sovereign debt crisis have shown the importance of the proper assessment and management of counterparty risk. This book focuses on the interaction and possible overlap between DVA and FVA terms. It also explores the particularly challenging issue of counterparty risk in portfolio credit modeling. Primarily for researchers and graduate students in financial mathematics, the book is also suitable for financial quants, managers in banks, CVA desks, and members of supervisory bodies.

Complex dynamics constitute a growing and increasingly important area as they offer a strong potential to explain and formalize natural, physical, financial and economic phenomena.

This book pursues the ambitious goal to bring together an extensive body of knowledge regarding complex dynamics from various academic disciplines. Beyond its focus on economics and finance, including for instance the evolution of macroeconomic growth models towards nonlinear structures as well as signal processing applications to stock markets, fundamental parts of the book are devoted to the use of nonlinear dynamics in mathematics, statistics, signal theory and processing.

Numerous examples and applications, almost 700 illustrations and numerical simulations based on the use of Matlab make the book an essential reference for researchers and students from many different disciplines who are interested in the nonlinear field. An appendix recapitulates the basic mathematical concepts required to use the book.