This volume, and a subsequent one, contain several new papers on index number and aggregation theory, as well as some previously published papers, by W.E. Diewert and co-authors. The two volumes study aggregation problems in economics, primarily the aggregation over goods problem. However, some of the chapters also touch on aspects of the aggregation over agents problem. In the present volume the reader can find, according to his/her requirements, either a short course on index number theory; a more in-depth course; or chapters on specific topics such as the measurement of inequality, functional forms for social welfare functions, or the theory of choice under uncertainty. Students and researchers will appreciate having these papers easily accessible. The book will be valuable too for those in the government agencies around the world that produce price statistics, insuring an understanding of important properties of alternative indexes, and of how economists use and interpret price indexes.

"The Statistical Abstract of the United States," published since 1878, is the standard summary of statistics on the social, political, and economic organization of the United States. It is designed to serve as a convenient volume for statistical reference and as a guide to other statistical publications and sources.

The main objective of politicians is to maximise economic growth, which heavily drives political policy and decision-making. Critics of the maximisation of growth as the central aim of economic policy have argued that growth in itself is not necessarily a good thing, particularly for the environment; however, what would replace the system and how it would be measured are questions that have been rarely answered satisfactorily. First published in 1991, this book was the first to lay out an entirely new set of practical proposals for developing new economic measurement tools, with the aim of being sustainable, 'green' and human-centred. Victor Anderson proposes that a whole set of indicators, rather than a single one, should play all the roles that GNP (Gross National Product) is responsible for. With a detailed overview of the central debates between the advocates and opponents of continued economic growth and an analysis of the various proposals for modification, this title will be of particular value to students interested in the diversity of measurement tools and the notion that economies should also be evaluated by their social and environmental consequences.

The epic successor to one of the most important books of the century: at once a retelling of global history, a scathing critique of contemporary politics, and a bold proposal for a new and fairer economic system.

Thomas Piketty’s bestselling Capital in the Twenty-First Century galvanized global debate about inequality. In this audacious follow-up, Piketty challenges us to revolutionize how we think about politics, ideology, and history. He exposes the ideas that have sustained inequality for the past millennium, reveals why the shallow politics of right and left are failing us today, and outlines the structure of a fairer economic system.

Our economy, Piketty observes, is not a natural fact. Markets, profits, and capital are all historical constructs that depend on choices. Piketty explores the material and ideological interactions of conflicting social groups that have given us slavery, serfdom, colonialism, communism, and hypercapitalism, shaping the lives of billions. He concludes that the great driver of human progress over the centuries has been the struggle for equality and education and not, as often argued, the assertion of property rights or the pursuit of stability. The new era of extreme inequality that has derailed that progress since the 1980s, he shows, is partly a reaction against communism, but it is also the fruit of ignorance, intellectual specialization, and our drift toward the dead-end politics of identity.

Once we understand this, we can begin to envision a more balanced approach to economics and politics. Piketty argues for a new “participatory” socialism, a system founded on an ideology of equality, social property, education, and the sharing of knowledge and power. Capital and Ideology is destined to be one of the indispensable books of our time, a work that will not only help us understand the world, but that will change it.

As the world economy becomes more integrated, products become more globalized. Airplanes, automobiles, computers, watches, and garments are among products whose constituent parts are made all over the world. This volume presents arguments and evidence showing that this process is benign: it raises competitiveness, creates jobs, and enhances economic welfare.

An engaging and accessible examination of what ails insurance markets—and what to do about it—by three leading economists.

Why is dental insurance so crummy? Why is pet insurance so expensive? Why does your auto insurer ask for your credit score? The answer to these questions lies in understanding how insurance works. Unlike the market for other goods and services—for instance, a grocer who doesn’t care who buys the store’s broccoli or carrots—insurance providers are more careful in choosing their customers, because some are more expensive than others.

Unraveling the mysteries of insurance markets, Liran Einav, Amy Finkelstein, and Ray Fisman explore such issues as why insurers want to know so much about us and whether we should let them obtain this information; why insurance entrepreneurs often fail (and some tricks that may help them succeed); and whether we’d be better off with government-mandated health insurance instead of letting businesses, customers, and markets decide who gets coverage and at what price. With insurance at the center of divisive debates about privacy, equity, and the appropriate role of government, this book offers clear explanations for some of the critical business and policy issues you’ve often wondered about, as well as for others you haven’t yet considered.

Risk, Uncertainty, and Profit is a groundbreaking work of economic theory, distinguishing between risk, which is by nature measurable and quantifiable, and uncertainty, which can be neither be measured nor quantified. We begin with an analysis of the functions of profit, risk and uncertainty in the economy. Frank H. Knight introduces his work with a discussion on profit and how there are conflicts about its nature between various economic theorists. As the title implies, the author's chief concern is the interplay between making a profit, incurring risk, and determining if there is uncertainty. Risks are different from uncertainty in that they can be measured and protected against. For example a location chosen for a factory or farm may have a measured risk of flooding in a given year. Businesses, insurers and investors alike can be made aware of this, and behave according to the quantified risk.

Three different lines of approach have contributed to the theory of optimal planning. One approach considers the problem from the view-point of a national government and its adviser, the econometrician planning speci alist. The government can, if this is thought to be desirable, stimulate investment in certain directions and discourage other economic activities. By various fiscal devices, it can influence both the total level and the distribution of investment funds over different sectors of production. Also, in many countries, a public agency plays some kind of coordinat ing role in the formulation of long-term plans for output by the enter prises sector; this may range from administrative direction in so-called centrally planned economies, to persuasion and advice in 'capitalist' economies. Accordingly, the public planner wishes to know what dis tribution of the nation's resources would be 'optimal'. This leads to the construction of various models which may be described under the general heading 'input-output type models'. This type of model has been largely developed by practitioners, among whom Sandee [B2] is probably the most outstanding and the earliest. A later, well-developed example of a model based on this approach is, for example, the Czech model by Cerny et al. [Bl]. A second approach considers the problem from the point of view of the private entrepreneur and his adviser, the manager and financial accountant.

This volume contains an accessible discussion examining computationally-intensive techniques and bootstrap methods, providing ways to improve the finite-sample performance of well-known asymptotic tests for regression models. The book uses the linear regression model as a framework for introducing simulation-based tests to help perform econometric analyses.

As well as providing a history of economic statistics, the book includes contributions by economists from a number of countries, applying economic statistics to the past and to current economic issues.

Handbook of Alternative Data in Finance, Volume I motivates and challenges the reader to explore and apply Alternative Data in finance. The book provides a robust and in-depth overview of Alternative Data, including its definition, characteristics, difference from conventional data, categories of Alternative Data, Alternative Data providers, and more. The book also offers a rigorous and detailed exploration of process, application and delivery that should be practically useful to researchers and practitioners alike. Features Includes cutting edge applications in machine learning, fintech, and more Suitable for professional quantitative analysts, and as a resource for postgraduates and researchers in financial mathematics Features chapters from many leading researchers and practitioners.

Provides a comprehensive and accessible introduction to general insurance pricing, based on the author’s many years of experience as both a teacher and practitioner. Suitable for students taking a course in general insurance pricing, notably if they are studying to become an actuary through the UK Institute of Actuaries exams. No other title quite like this on the market that is perfect for teaching/study, and is also an excellent guide for practitioners.

This timely volume brings together professors of finance and accounting from Japanese universities to examine the Japanese stock market in terms of its pricing and accounting systems. The papers report the results of empirical research into the Japanese stock market within the framework of new theories of finance. Academics, professionals, and anyone seeking to understand or enter the Japanese market will applaud the publication of this practical, informative volume.

Having gathered data from the late 1970's through 1984, the authors analyze the market's behavior and the applicability of two major theoretical pricing models -- the Capital Asset Pricing Models and the Efficient Market Hypothesis -- to that market. Chapter 1 provides background statistical evidence on the behavior of monthly returns on Tokyo Stock Exchange common stocks. Chapter 2 discusses an empirical test of the capital asset pricing model. Chapter 3 examines evidence on the price performance of unseasoned new issues. The authors also examine the Japanese accounting disclosure system: Chapter 4 deals empirically with the information content of the annual accounting announcements and related market efficiency. The next chapter presents empirical evidence on the relationship between unsystematic returns and earnings forecast errors. Next, empirical research into the usefulness to investors of the disclosure system is examined. Finally, Chapter 7 presents several interesting questions and topics for future research on the Japanese stock market.

Self-contained chapters on the most important applications and methodologies in finance, which can easily be used for the reader’s research or as a reference for courses on empirical finance. Each chapter is reproducible in the sense that the reader can replicate every single figure, table, or number by simply copy-pasting the code we provide. A full-fledged introduction to machine learning with tidymodels based on tidy principles to show how factor selection and option pricing can benefit from Machine Learning methods. Chapter 2 on accessing & managing financial data shows how to retrieve and prepare the most important datasets in the field of financial economics: CRSP and Compustat. The chapter also contains detailed explanations of the most important data characteristics. Each chapter provides exercises that are based on established lectures and exercise classes and which are designed to help students to dig deeper. The exercises can be used for self-studying or as source of inspiration for teaching exercises.

This book analyzes the following four distinct, although not dissimilar, areas of social choice theory and welfare economics: nonstrategic choice, Harsanyi's aggregation theorems, distributional ethics and strategic choice. While for aggregation of individual ranking of social states, whether the persons behave strategically or non-strategically, the decision making takes place under complete certainty; in the Harsanyi framework uncertainty has a significant role in the decision making process. Another ingenious characteristic of the book is the discussion of ethical approaches to evaluation of inequality arising from unequal distributions of achievements in the different dimensions of human well-being. Given its wide coverage, combined with newly added materials, end-chapter problems and bibliographical notes, the book will be helpful material for students and researchers interested in this frontline area research. Its lucid exposition, along with non-technical and graphical illustration of the concepts, use of numerical examples, makes the book a useful text.

This Volume of "Advances in Econometrics" contains a selection of papers presented initially at the 7th Annual Advances in Econometrics Conference held on the LSU campus in Baton Rouge, Louisiana during November 14-16, 2008. The theme of the conference was 'Nonparametric Econometric Methods', and the papers selected for inclusion in this Volume span a range of nonparametric techniques including kernel smoothing, empirical copulas, series estimators, and smoothing splines along with a variety of semiparametric methods. The papers in this Volume cover topics of interest to those who wish to familiarize themselves with current nonparametric methodology. Many papers also identify areas deserving of future attention. There exist survey papers devoted to recent developments in nonparametric nance, constrained nonparametric regression, miparametric/nonparametric environmental econometrics and nonparametric models with non-stationary data. There exist theoretical papers dealing with novel approaches for partial identification of the distribution of treatment effects, xed effects semiparametric panel data models, functional coefficient models with time series data, exponential series estimators of empirical copulas, estimation of multivariate CDFs and bias-reduction methods for density estimation. There also exist a number of applications that analyze returns to education, the evolution of income and life expectancy, the role of governance in growth, farm production, city size and unemployment rates, derivative pricing, and environmental pollution and economic growth. In short, this Volume contains a range of theoretical developments, surveys, and applications that would be of interest to those who wish to keep abreast of some of the most important current developments in the field of nonparametric estimation.

Economic Phenomena before and after War is the result of the author's search for a scientific explanation of modern wars, by means of economic statistical data, in the statistics of consumption, production and natural growth of population. The theory discussed assumes that a state of war in modern communities is dependent on the general economic equilibrium, which becomes more and more unstable as industrialization progresses. A state of war indicates a turning point in the action of balancing forces; it moves the economic forces in an opposite direction and is therefore a means for stabilizing the general economic equilibrium.

Providing researchers in economics, finance, and statistics with an up-to-date introduction to applying Bayesian techniques to empirical studies, this book covers the full range of the new numerical techniques which have been developed over the last thirty years. Notably, these are: Monte Carlo sampling, antithetic replication, importance sampling, and Gibbs sampling. The author covers both advances in theory and modern approaches to numerical and applied problems, and includes applications drawn from a variety of different fields within economics, while also providing a quick overview of the underlying statistical ideas of Bayesian thought. The result is a book which presents a roadmap of applied economic questions that can now be addressed empirically with Bayesian methods. Consequently, many researchers will find this a readily readable survey of this growing topic.

This volume collects authoritative contributions on analytical methods and mathematical statistics. The methods presented include resampling techniques; the minimization of divergence; estimation theory and regression, eventually under shape or other constraints or long memory; and iterative approximations when the optimal solution is difficult to achieve. It also investigates probability distributions with respect to their stability, heavy-tailness, Fisher information and other aspects, both asymptotically and non-asymptotically. The book not only presents the latest mathematical and statistical methods and their extensions, but also offers solutions to real-world problems including option pricing. The selected, peer-reviewed contributions were originally presented at the workshop on Analytical Methods in Statistics, AMISTAT 2015, held in Prague, Czech Republic, November 10-13, 2015.

This book develops the analysis of Time Series from its formal beginnings in the 1890s through to the publication of Box and Jenkins' watershed publication in 1970, showing how these methods laid the foundations for the modern techniques of Time Series analysis that are in use today.

Technical Analysis of Stock Trends helps investors make smart, profitable trading decisions by providing proven long- and short-term stock trend analysis. It gets right to the heart of effective technical trading concepts, explaining technical theory such as The Dow Theory, reversal patterns, consolidation formations, trends and channels, technical analysis of commodity charts, and advances in investment technology. It also includes a comprehensive guide to trading tactics from long and short goals, stock selection, charting, low and high risk, trend recognition tools, balancing and diversifying the stock portfolio, application of capital, and risk management. This updated new edition includes patterns and modifiable charts that are tighter and more illustrative. Expanded material is also included on Pragmatic Portfolio Theory as a more elegant alternative to Modern Portfolio Theory; and a newer, simpler, and more powerful alternative to Dow Theory is presented. This book is the perfect introduction, giving you the knowledge and wisdom to craft long-term success.

This book provides a new source of data and analysis on the role of multinational companies in U.S. international trade over the past two decades. Developed from benchmark surveys of foreign direct investment conducted by the U.S. Government, it contains 96 tables and companion analyses covering affiliate trade, intrafirm trade, bilateral trade, ultimate beneficial owners, commodity (SITC) trade, and affiliate industry groups. The book is intended for researchers and analysts in international business, international trade, and international finance.

This book provides a new source of data and analysis on the role of multinational companies in U.S. international trade over the past two decades. Developed from benchmark surveys of foreign direct investment conducted by the U.S. Government, it contains 96 tables showing MNC-related trade for 1975, 1982, and 1989. Tables and analysis cover affiliate related trade, intrafirm related trade, bilateral trade with major trading partners, the role of ultimate beneficial owners, commodity (SITC) trade, and trade by affiliate industry groups. The data and analyses in the book will be equally useful to academic researchers and policy analysts in the fields of international business, international trade, and international finance.

If you know a little bit about financial mathematics but don't yet know a lot about programming, then C++ for Financial Mathematics is for you. C++ is an essential skill for many jobs in quantitative finance, but learning it can be a daunting prospect. This book gathers together everything you need to know to price derivatives in C++ without unnecessary complexities or technicalities. It leads the reader step-by-step from programming novice to writing a sophisticated and flexible financial mathematics library. At every step, each new idea is motivated and illustrated with concrete financial examples. As employers understand, there is more to programming than knowing a computer language. As well as covering the core language features of C++, this book teaches the skills needed to write truly high quality software. These include topics such as unit tests, debugging, design patterns and data structures. The book teaches everything you need to know to solve realistic financial problems in C++. It can be used for self-study or as a textbook for an advanced undergraduate or master's level course.

This book aims to help the reader better understand the importance of data analysis in project management. Moreover, it provides guidance by showing tools, methods, techniques and lessons learned on how to better utilize the data gathered from the projects. First and foremost, insight into the bridge between data analytics and project management aids practitioners looking for ways to maximize the practical value of data procured. The book equips organizations with the know-how necessary to adapt to a changing workplace dynamic through key lessons learned from past ventures. The book's integrated approach to investigating both fields enhances the value of research findings.