KE is applied to the four major equating designs and to both Chain Equating and Post-Stratification Equating for the Non-Equivalent groups with Anchor Test Design. It will be an important reference for several groups: (a) Statisticians (b) Practitioners and (c) Instructors in psychometric and measurement programs. The authors assume some familiarity with linear and equipercentile test equating, and with matrix algebra.

Studies in Global Econometrics is a collection of essays on the use of cross-country data based on purchasing power parities. The two major applications are the development over time of per capital gross domestic products, (including that of their inequalities among countries and regions) and the fitting of cross-country demand equations for broad groups of consumer goods. The introductory chapter provides highlights of the author's work as relating to these developments. One of the main topics of the work is a system of demand equations for broad groups of consumer goods fitted by means of cross-country data. These data are from the International Comparison Program, which provides PPP-based figures for a number of years and countries. Similar data are used for the measurement of the dispersion of national per capita incomes between and within seven geographic regions.

1 DATA ENVELOPMENT ANALYSIS Data Envelopment Analysis (DEA) was initially developed as a method for assessing the comparative efficiencies of organisational units such as the branches of a bank, schools, hospital departments or restaurants. The key in each case is that they perform feature which makes the units comparable the same function in terms of the kinds of resource they use and the types of output they produce. For example all bank branches to be compared would typically use staff and capital assets to effect income generating activities such as advancing loans, selling financial products and carrying out banking transactions on behalf of their clients. The efficiencies assessed in this context by DEA are intended to reflect the scope for resource conservation at the unit being assessed without detriment to its outputs, or alternatively, the scope for output augmentation without additional resources. The efficiencies assessed are comparative or relative because they reflect scope for resource conservation or output augmentation at one unit relative to other comparable benchmark units rather than in some absolute sense. We resort to relative rather than absolute efficiencies because in most practical contexts we lack sufficient information to derive the superior measures of absolute efficiency. DEA was initiated by Charnes Cooper and Rhodes in 1978 in their seminal paper Chames et al. (1978). The paper operationalised and extended by means of linear programming production economics concepts of empirical efficiency put forth some twenty years earlier by Farrell (1957).

This book describes the new generation of discrete choice methods, focusing on the many advances that are made possible by simulation. Researchers use these statistical methods to examine the choices that consumers, households, firms, and other agents make. Each of the major models is covered: logit, generalized extreme value, or GEV (including nested and cross-nested logits), probit, and mixed logit, plus a variety of specifications that build on these basics. Simulation-assisted estimation procedures are investigated and compared, including maximum stimulated likelihood, method of simulated moments, and method of simulated scores. Procedures for drawing from densities are described, including variance reduction techniques such as anithetics and Halton draws. Recent advances in Bayesian procedures are explored, including the use of the Metropolis-Hastings algorithm and its variant Gibbs sampling. The second edition adds chapters on endogeneity and expectation-maximization (EM) algorithms. No other book incorporates all these fields, which have arisen in the past 25 years. The procedures are applicable in many fields, including energy, transportation, environmental studies, health, labor, and marketing.

A lot of economic problems can be formulated as constrained optimizations and equilibration of their solutions. Various mathematical theories have been supplying economists with indispensable machineries for these problems arising in economic theory. Conversely, mathematicians have been stimulated by various mathematical difficulties raised by economic theories. The series is designed to bring together those mathematicians who are seriously interested in getting new challenging stimuli from economic theories with those economists who are seeking effective mathematical tools for their research.

From Catastrophe to Chaos: A General Theory of Economic Discontinuities presents and unusual perspective on economics and economic analysis. Current economic theory largely depends upon assuming that the world is fundamentally continuous. However, an increasing amount of economic research has been done using approaches that allow for discontinuities such as catastrophe theory, chaos theory, synergetics, and fractal geometry. The spread of such approaches across a variety of disciplines of thought has constituted a virtual intellectual revolution in recent years. This book reviews the applications of these approaches in various subdisciplines of economics and draws upon past economic thinkers to develop an integrated view of economics as a whole from the perspective of inherent discontinuity.

Many economic and social surveys are designed as panel studies, which provide important data for describing social changes and testing causal relations between social phenomena. This textbook shows how to manage, describe, and model these kinds of data. It presents models for continuous and categorical dependent variables, focusing either on the level of these variables at different points in time or on their change over time. It covers fixed and random effects models, models for change scores and event history models. All statistical methods are explained in an application-centered style using research examples from scholarly journals, which can be replicated by the reader through data provided on the accompanying website. As all models are compared to each other, it provides valuable assistance with choosing the right model in applied research. The textbook is directed at master and doctoral students as well as applied researchers in the social sciences, psychology, business administration and economics. Readers should be familiar with linear regression and have a good understanding of ordinary least squares estimation.

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.

This volume seeks to go beyond the microeconomic view of wages as a cost having negative consequences on a given firm, to consider the positive macroeconomic dynamics associated with wages as a major component of aggregate demand.

Monetary Policy and the Economy in South Africa covers both modern theories and empirical analysis, linking monetary policy with relating house wealth, drivers of current account based on asset approach, expenditure switching and income absorption effects of monetary policy on trade balance, effects of inflation uncertainty on output growth and international spill overs. Each chapter uses data and relevant methodology to answer empirical and pertinent policy questions in South Africa. The book gives new insights into understanding these areas of economic policy and the wider emerging-markets.

"In this book, Peter Bogetoft - THE expert on the theory and practice of benchmarking - provides an in-depth yet very accessible and readable explanation of the best way to do benchmarking, starting from the ground up." Rick Antle William S. Beinecke Professor of Accounting, Yale School of Management CFO, Compensation Valuation, Inc. "I highly recommend this well-written and comprehensive book on measuring and managing performance. Dr. Bogetoft summarizes the fundamental mathematical concepts in an elegant, intuitive, and understandable way." Jon A. Chilingerian Professor, Brandeis University and INSEAD "Bogetoft gives in his book Performance Benchmarking an excellent introduction to the methodological basis of benchmarking." Christian Parbol Director, DONG Energy "This book is the primer on benchmarking for performance management." Albert Birck Business Performance Manager, Maersk Oil "This excellent book provides a non technical introduction for performance management." Misja Mikkers, Director, Dutch Health Care Authority "With this very well written and comprehensive introduction to the many facets of benchmarking in hand, organizations have no excuse for not applying the best and cost effective benchmarking methods in their performance assessments." Stig P. Christensen Senior R&D Director, COWI

The book proposes an overview of the research conducted to date in the field of wine economics. All of these contributions have in common the use of econometric techniques and mathematical formalization to describe the new challenges of this economic sector.

This book proposes new methods of detecting causality among several dynamic variables and of estimating divisions of nominal income changes into changes in output and prices. Amano builds on established traditions of macro-dynamics and the theories of Keynes and Freidman, while providing innovative perspectives and important policy implications.

This book develops the major themes of time series analysis from its formal beginnings in the early part of the 20th century to the present day through the research of six distinguished British statisticians, all of whose work is characterised by the British traits of pragmatism and the desire to solve practical problems of importance.

These proceedings, from a conference held at the Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis on October 17-18, 1991, attempted to layout what we currently know about aggregate economic fluctuations. Identifying what we know inevitably reveals what we do not know about such fluctuations as well. From the vantage point of where the conference's participants view our current understanding to be, these proceedings can be seen as suggesting an agenda for further research. The conference was divided into five sections. It began with the formu lation of an empirical definition of the "business cycle" and a recitation of the stylized facts that must be explained by any theory that purports to capture the business cycle's essence. After outlining the historical develop ment and key features of the current "theories" of business cycles, the conference evaluated these theories on the basis of their ability to explain the facts. Included in this evaluation was a discussion of whether (and how) the competing theories could be distinguished empirically. The conference then examined the implications for policy of what is known and not known about business cycles. A panel discussion closed the conference, high lighting important unresolved theoretical and empirical issues that should be taken up in future business cycle research. What Is a Business Cycle? Before gaining a genuine understanding of business cycles, economists must agree and be clear about what they mean when they refer to the cycle."

Each chapter of Macroeconometrics is written by respected econometricians in order to provide useful information and perspectives for those who wish to apply econometrics in macroeconomics. The chapters are all written with clear methodological perspectives, making the virtues and limitations of particular econometric approaches accessible to a general readership familiar with applied macroeconomics. The real tensions in macroeconometrics are revealed by the critical comments from different econometricians, having an alternative perspective, which follow each chapter.

Observers and Macroeconomic Systems is concerned with the computational aspects of using a control-theoretic approach to the analysis of dynamic macroeconomic systems. The focus is on using a separate model for the development of the control policies. In particular, it uses the observer-based approach whereby the separate model learns to behave in a similar manner to the economic system through output-injections. The book shows how this approach can be used to learn the forward-looking behaviour of economic actors which is a distinguishing feature of dynamic macroeconomic models. It also shows how it can be used in conjunction with low-order models to undertake policy analysis with a large practical econometric model. This overcomes some of the computational problems arising from using just the large econometric models to compute optimal policy trajectories. The work also develops visual simulation software tools that can be used for policy analysis with dynamic macroeconomic systems.

Unlike uncertain dynamical systems in physical sciences where models for prediction are somewhat given to us by physical laws, uncertain dynamical systems in economics need statistical models. In this context, modeling and optimization surface as basic ingredients for fruitful applications. This volume concentrates on the current methodology of copulas and maximum entropy optimization. This volume contains main research presentations at the Sixth International Conference of the Thailand Econometrics Society held at the Faculty of Economics, Chiang Mai University, Thailand, during January 10-11, 2013. It consists of keynote addresses, theoretical and applied contributions. These contributions to Econometrics are somewhat centered around the theme of Copulas and Maximum Entropy Econometrics. The method of copulas is applied to a variety of economic problems where multivariate model building and correlation analysis are needed. As for the art of choosing copulas in practical problems, the principle of maximum entropy surfaces as a potential way to do so. The state-of-the-art of Maximum Entropy Econometrics is presented in the first keynote address, while the second keynote address focusses on testing stationarity in economic time series data.

New Directions in Computational Economics brings together for the first time a diverse selection of papers, sharing the underlying theme of application of computing technology as a tool for achieving solutions to realistic problems in computational economics and related areas in the environmental, ecological and energy fields. Part I of the volume addresses experimental and computational issues in auction mechanisms, including a survey of recent results for sealed bid auctions. The second contribution uses neural networks as the basis for estimating bid functions for first price sealed bid auctions. Also presented is the `smart market' computational mechanism which better matches bids and offers for natural gas. Part II consists of papers that formulate and solve models of economics systems. Amman and Kendrick's paper deals with control models and the computational difficulties that result from nonconvexities. Using goal programming, Nagurney, Thore and Pan formulate spatial resource allocation models to analyze various policy issues. Thompson and Thrall next present a rigorous mathematical analysis of the relationship between efficiency and profitability. The problem of matching uncertain streams of assets and liabilities is solved using stochastic optimization techniques in the following paper in this section. Finally, Part III applies economic concepts to issues in computer science in addition to using computational techniques to solve economic models.

The remarkable evolution of econophysics research has brought the deep synthesis of ideas derived from economics and physicsto subjects as diverse as education, banking, finance, and the administration of large institutions. The original papers in this collection present a broad summary of these advances, written by interdisciplinary specialists. Included are studies on subjects in the development of econophysics; on the perspectives offered by econophysics on large problems in economics and finance, including the 2008-9 financial crisis; and on higher education and group decision making. The introductions and insights they provide will benefit everyone interested in applications of this new transdisciplinary science.
Ten papers present an updated version of the origins, issues, and applications of econophysics Economics and finance chapters consider lessons learned from the 2008-9 financial crisis Sociophysics chapters propose new thinking on educational reforms and group decision making"

Gini's mean difference (GMD) was first introduced by Corrado Gini in 1912 as an alternative measure of variability. GMD and the parameters which are derived from it (such as the Gini coefficient or the concentration ratio) have been in use in the area of income distribution for almost a century. In practice, the use of GMD as a measure of variability is justified whenever the investigator is not ready to impose, without questioning, the convenient world of normality. This makes the GMD of critical importance in the complex research of statisticians, economists, econometricians, and policy makers. This book focuses on imitating analyses that are based on variance by replacing variance with the GMD and its variants. In this way, the text showcases how almost everything that can be done with the variance as a measure of variability, can be replicated by using Gini. Beyond this, there are marked benefits to utilizing Gini as opposed to other methods. One of the advantages of using Gini methodology is that it provides a unified system that enables the user to learn about various aspects of the underlying distribution. It also provides a systematic method and a unified terminology. Using Gini methodology can reduce the risk of imposing assumptions that are not supported by the data on the model. With these benefits in mind the text uses the covariance-based approach, though applications to other approaches are mentioned as well.

In plying their trade, social scientists often are confronted with significant phenomena that appear incapable of measurement. Past practice would suggest that the way to deal with these cases is to work harder at finding appropriate measures so that standard quantitative analysis can still be applied. Professor Katzner's approach, however is quite different. Rather than concentrating on the construction of measures, he raises the question of how such phenomena can be investigated and understood in the absence of numerical gauges to represent them.

At the time of this volume's publication in 1985, general equilibrium modelling had become a significant area of applied economic research. Its focus was to develop techniques to facilitate economy-wide quantitative assessment of allocative and distributional impacts on policy changes. UK Tax Policy and Applied General Equilibrium Analysis was the first book-length treatment of the development and application of an applied general equilibrium model of the Walrasian type, constructed to analyse UK taxation and subsidy policy. As a whole, UK Tax Policy and Applied General Equilibrium Analysis offers the reader two things. First, it gives a detailed account of the development of an applied general equilibrium model of the UK. Second, it provides results of model experiments which have been designed to inform the policy debate, not only in the UK but also in other countries. It should thus be of interest to both researchers and students undertaking research in the applied general equilibrium area and to policy makers concerned with tax reform.

The modern system-wide approach to applied demand analysis emphasizes a unity between theory and applications. Its firm foundations in economic theory make it one of the most successful areas of applied econometrics. A System-Wide Analysis of International Consumption Patterns presents a large number of applications of recent innovations in the area and uses consumption data for 18 OECD countries to provide convincing evidence, one way or the other, about the validity of consumption theory. The empirical results presented in the book have a number of uses. Reliable estimates of income and price elasticities of demand are provided for 10 commodity groups in 18 countries. A feature of these results is that a number of major empirical regularities are identified that seem to hold across different periods and different countries. A System-Wide Analysis of International Consumption Patterns also presents an extensive application of recently developed Monte Carlo testing procedures - to test demand theory and the structure of preferences. The results so obtained are in stark contrast to most previous findings based on the conventional asymptotic tests. Other results presented in the book include: (i) Differences in economic variables (prices and and incomes in particular) account for observed differences in consumption patterns internationally, while differences in tastes seem to play a much smaller role. (ii) Own-price elasticities are approximately proportional to the corresponding income elasticities, a result coinciding with Pigou's law. (iii) The income elasticity of the marginal utility of income does not seem to depend on income, which contradicts the famous Frisch's conjecture.

Cost Structure and the Measurement of Economic Performance is designed to provide a comprehensive guide for students, researchers or consultants who wish to model, construct, interpret, and use economic performance measures. The topical emphasis is on productivity growth and its dependence on the cost structure. The methodological focus is on application of the tools of economic analysis - the `thinking structure' provided by microeconomic theory - to measure technological or cost structure, and link it with market and regulatory structure. This provides a rich basis for evaluation of economic performance and its determinants. The format of the book stresses topics or questions of interest rather than the theoretical tools for analysis. Traditional productivity growth modeling and measurement practices that result in a productivity residual often called the `measure of our ignorance' are initially overviewed, and then the different aspects of technological, market and regulatory structure that might underlie this residual are explored. The ultimate goal is to decompose or explain the residual, by modeling and measuring a multitude of impacts that determine the economic performance of firms, sectors, and economies. The chapters are organized with three broad goals in mind. The first is to introduce the overall ideas involved in economic performance measurement and traditional productivity growth analysis. Issues associated with different types of (short and long run, internal and external) cost economies, market and regulatory impacts, and other general cost efficiencies that might impact these measures are then explored. Finally, some of the theoretical, data construction and econometric tools necessary to justify and implement these models are emphasized.