Louis Phlips The stabilisation of primary commodity prices, and the related issue of the stabilisation of export earnings of developing countries, have traditionally been studied without reference to the futures markets (that exist or could exist) for these commodities. These futures markets have in turn been s udied in isolation. The same is true for the new developments on financial markets. Over the last few years, in particular sine the 1985 tin crisis and the October 1987 stock exchange crisis, it has become evident that there are inter actions between commodity, futures, and financial markets and that these inter actions are very important. The more so as trade on futures and financial markets has shown a spectacular increase. This volume brings together a number of recent and unpublished papers on these interactions by leading specialists (and their students). A first set of papers examines how the use of futures markets could help stabilising export earnings of developing countries and how this compares to the rather unsuccessful UNCTAD type interventions via buffer stocks, pegged prices and cartels. A second set of papers faces the fact, largely ignored in the literature, that commodity prices are determined in foreign currencies, with the result that developing countries suffer from the volatility of exchange rates of these currencies (even in cases where commodity prices are relatively stable). Financial markets are thus explicitly linked to futures and commodity markets."

The field of Computational Economics is a fast growing area. Due to the limitations in analytical modeling, more and more researchers apply numerical methods as a means of problem solving. In tum these quantitative results can be used to make qualitative statements. This volume of the Advanced Series in Theoretical and Applied and Econometrics comprises a selected number of papers in the field of computational economics presented at the Annual Meeting of the Society Economic Dynamics and Control held in Minneapolis, June 1990. The volume covers ten papers dealing with computational issues in Econo metrics, Economics and Optimization. The first five papers in these proceedings are dedicated to numerical issues in econometric estimation. The following three papers are concerned with computational issues in model solving and optimization. The last two papers highlight some numerical techniques for solving micro models. We are sure that Computational Economics will become an important new trend in Economics in the coming decade. Hopefully this volume can be one of the first contributions highlighting this new trend. The Editors H.M. Amman et a1. (eds), Computational Economics and Econometrics, vii. (c) 1992 Kluwer Academic Publishers. PART ONE ECONOMETRICS LIKELIHOOD EVALUATION FOR DYNAMIC LATENT VARIABLES 1 MODELS DAVID F. HENDRY Nuffield College, Oxford, U.K. and JEAN-FRANc;mS RICHARD ISDS, Pittsburgh University, Pittsburgh, PA, U.S.A."

In this testament to the distinguished career of H.S. Houthakker a number of Professor Houthakker's friends, former colleagues and former students offer essays which build upon and extend his many contributions to economics in aggregation, consumption, growth and trade. Among the many distinguished contributors are Paul Samuelson, Werner Hildenbrand, John Muellbauer and Lester Telser. The book also includes four previously unpublished papers and notes by its distinguished dedicatee.

Every advance in computer architecture and software tempts statisticians to tackle numerically harder problems. To do so intelligently requires a good working knowledge of numerical analysis. This book equips students to craft their own software and to understand the advantages and disadvantages of different numerical methods. Issues of numerical stability, accurate approximation, computational complexity, and mathematical modeling share the limelight in a broad yet rigorous overview of those parts of numerical analysis most relevant to statisticians. In this second edition, the material on optimization has been completely rewritten. There is now an entire chapter on the MM algorithm in addition to more comprehensive treatments of constrained optimization, penalty and barrier methods, and model selection via the lasso. There is also new material on the Cholesky decomposition, Gram-Schmidt orthogonalization, the QR decomposition, the singular value decomposition, and reproducing kernel Hilbert spaces. The discussions of the bootstrap, permutation testing, independent Monte Carlo, and hidden Markov chains are updated, and a new chapter on advanced MCMC topics introduces students to Markov random fields, reversible jump MCMC, and convergence analysis in Gibbs sampling. Numerical Analysis for Statisticians can serve as a graduate text for a course surveying computational statistics. With a careful selection of topics and appropriate supplementation, it can be used at the undergraduate level. It contains enough material for a graduate course on optimization theory. Because many chapters are nearly self-contained, professional statisticians will also find the book useful as a reference.

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. "

Economic indicators provide invaluable insights into how different economies and financial markets are performing, enabling practitioners to adjust their investment strategies in order to gain knowledge about markets and to achieve higher returns. However, in order to make the right decisions, you must know how to interpret the relevant indicators. Using Economic Indicators in Analysing Financial Markets provides this important guidance. The first and second part of Using Economic Indicators in Analysing Financial Markets focuses on the short-term analysis, explaining exactly what the indicators are, why they are significant, where and when they are published, and how reliable they are. In the third part, author Bernd Krampen highlights medium and long-term economic trends: It is shown how some previously discussed and additional market indicators like stocks, bond yields, commodities can be employed as basis for forecasting both GDP growth and inflation. This includes the estimation of possible future recessions. In the fourth part the predominantly good forecast properties of sentiment indicators are illustrated examining the real estate market, which is rounded up by an introduction into psychology and Behavioural Finance providing further tips and tricks in analysing financial markets. Using Economic Indicators in Analysing Financial Markets is an invaluable resource for investors, strategists, policymakers, students, and private investors worldwide who want to understand the true meaning of the latest economic trends to make the best decisions for future profits on financial markets.

Written to complement the second edition of best-selling textbook Introductory Econometrics for Finance, this book provides a comprehensive introduction to the use of the Regression Analysis of Time Series (RATS) software for modelling in finance and beyond. It provides numerous worked examples with carefully annotated code and detailed explanations of the outputs, giving readers the knowledge and confidence to use the software for their own research and to interpret their own results. A wide variety of important modelling approaches are covered, including such topics as time-series analysis and forecasting, volatility modelling, limited dependent variable and panel methods, switching models and simulations methods. The book is supported by an accompanying website containing freely downloadable data and RATS instructions.

Commerce, Complexity, and Evolution is a significant contribution to the paradigm - straddling economics, finance, marketing, and management - which acknowledges that commercial systems are evolutionary, and must therefore be analysed using evolutionary tools. Evolutionary systems display complicated behaviours which are to a significant degree generated endogenously, rather than being solely the product of exogenous shocks, hence the conjunction of complexity with evolution. This volume considers a wide range of systems, from the entire economy at one extreme to the behaviour of single markets at the other. The papers are united by methodologies which at their core are evolutionary, though the techniques cover a wide range, from philosophical discourse to differential equations, genetic algorithms, multi-agent simulations and cellular automata. Issues considered include the dynamics of debt-deflation, stock management in a complex environment, interactions between consumers and its effect upon market behaviour, and nonlinear methods to profit from financial market volatility.

One of the major controversies in macroeconomics over the last 30 years has been that on the effectiveness of stabilization policies. However, this debate, between those who believe that this kind of policies is useless if not harmful and those who argue in favor of it, has been mainly theoretical so far. The Rational Expectation Hypothesis, Time-Varying Parameters and Adaptive Control wants to represent a step toward the construction of a common ground on which to empirically compare the two "beliefs" and to do this three strands of literature are brought together. The first strand is the research on time-varying parameters (TVP), the second strand is the work on adaptive control and the third one is the literature on linear stationary models with rational expectations (RE). The material presented in The Rational Expectation Hypothesis, Time-Varying Parameters and Adaptive Control is divided into two parts. Part 1 combines the strand of literature on adaptive control with that on TVP. It generalizes the approach pioneered by Tse and Bar-Shalom (1973) and Kendrick (1981) and one recently used in Amman and Kendrick (2002), where the law of motion of the TVP and the hyperstructural parameters are assumed known, to the case where the hyperstructural parameters are assumed unknown. Part 2 is devoted to the linear single-equation stationary RE model estimated with the error-in-variables (EV) method. It presents a new formulation of this problem based on the use of TVP in an EV model. This new formulation opens the door to a very promising development. All the theory developed in the first part to control a model with TVP can sic et simpliciter be applied to control a model with RE.

The essays in this special volume survey some of the most recent advances in the global analysis of dynamic models for economics, finance and the social sciences. They deal in particular with a range of topics from mathematical methods as well as numerous applications including recent developments on asset pricing, heterogeneous beliefs, global bifurcations in complementarity games, international subsidy games and issues in economic geography. A number of stochastic dynamic models are also analysed. The book is a collection of essays in honour of the 60th birthday of Laura Gardini.

Testing for a Unit Root is now an essential part of time series analysis but the literature on the topic is so large that knowing where to start is difficult even for the specialist. This book provides a way into the techniques of unit root testing, explaining the pitfalls and nonstandard cases, using practical examples and simulation analysis.

Testing for a unit root is now an essential part of time series analysis. Indeed no time series study in economics, and other disciplines that use time series observations, can ignore the crucial issue of nonstationarity caused by a unit root. However, the literature on the topic is large and often technical, making it difficult to understand the key practical issues.
This volume provides an accessible introduction and a critical overview of tests for a unit root in time series, with extensive practical examples and illustrations using simulation analysis. It presents the concepts that enable the reader to understand the theoretical background, and importance of random walks and Brownian motion, to the development of unit root tests. The book also examines the latest developments and practical concerns in unit root testing.
This book is indispensable reading for all interested in econometrics, time series econometrics, applied econometrics and applied statistics. It will also be of interest to other disciplines, such as geography, climate change and meteorology, which use time series data.

Stochastic Averaging and Extremum Seeking treats methods inspired by attempts to understand the seemingly non-mathematical question of bacterial chemotaxis and their application in other environments. The text presents significant generalizations on existing stochastic averaging theory developed from scratch and necessitated by the need to avoid violation of previous theoretical assumptions by algorithms which are otherwise effective in treating these systems. Coverage is given to four main topics. Stochastic averaging theorems are developed for the analysis of continuous-time nonlinear systems with random forcing, removing prior restrictions on nonlinearity growth and on the finiteness of the time interval. The new stochastic averaging theorems are usable not only as approximation tools but also for providing stability guarantees. Stochastic extremum-seeking algorithms are introduced for optimization of systems without available models. Both gradient- and Newton-based algorithms are presented, offering the user the choice between the simplicity of implementation (gradient) and the ability to achieve a known, arbitrary convergence rate (Newton). The design of algorithms for non-cooperative/adversarial games is described. The analysis of their convergence to Nash equilibria is provided. The algorithms are illustrated on models of economic competition and on problems of the deployment of teams of robotic vehicles. Bacterial locomotion, such as chemotaxis in E. coli, is explored with the aim of identifying two simple feedback laws for climbing nutrient gradients. Stochastic extremum seeking is shown to be a biologically-plausible interpretation for chemotaxis. For the same chemotaxis-inspired stochastic feedback laws, the book also provides a detailed analysis of convergence for models of nonholonomic robotic vehicles operating in GPS-denied environments. The book contains block diagrams and several simulation examples, including examples arising from bacterial locomotion, multi-agent robotic systems, and economic market models. Stochastic Averaging and Extremum Seeking will be informative for control engineers from backgrounds in electrical, mechanical, chemical and aerospace engineering and to applied mathematicians. Economics researchers, biologists, biophysicists and roboticists will find the applications examples instructive.

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.

Econometric models are made up of assumptions which never exactly match reality. Among the most contested ones is the requirement that the coefficients of an econometric model remain stable over time. Recent years have therefore seen numerous attempts to test for it or to model possible structural change when it can no longer be ignored. This collection of papers from Empirical Economics mirrors part of this development. The point of departure of most studies in this volume is the standard linear regression model Yt = x;fJt + U (t = I, ... , 1), t where notation is obvious and where the index t emphasises the fact that structural change is mostly discussed and encountered in a time series context. It is much less of a problem for cross section data, although many tests apply there as well. The null hypothesis of most tests for structural change is that fJt = fJo for all t, i.e. that the same regression applies to all time periods in the sample and that the disturbances u are well behaved. The well known Chow test for instance assumes t that there is a single structural shift at a known point in time, i.e. that fJt = fJo (t< t*), and fJt = fJo + t1fJ (t"?:. t*), where t* is known.

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 important new dictionary - the first of its kind, now available in paperback - presents an accessible source of reference on the main concepts and techniques in econometrics. Featuring entries on all the major areas in theoretical econometrics, the dictionary will be used by students, both undergraduate and postgraduate, to aid their understanding of the subject. Sorted by alphabetical order, each entry is a short essay which is designed to present the essential points of a particular concept or technique and offer a concise guide to other relevant literature. Written in an accessible and discursive style, the book adopts non-technical language to make the topics accessible to those who need to know more about applied econometrics and the underlying econometric theory. It will be widely welcomed as an indispensable supplement to the standard textbook literature and will be particularly well suited to students following modular courses. An essential source of reference for both undergraduate and post graduate students, the dictionary will also be useful for professional economists seeking to keep abreast of the latest developments in econometrics.

Markov networks and other probabilistic graphical modes have recently received an upsurge in attention from Evolutionary computation community, particularly in the area of Estimation of distribution algorithms (EDAs). EDAs have arisen as one of the most successful experiences in the application of machine learning methods in optimization, mainly due to their efficiency to solve complex real-world optimization problems and their suitability for theoretical analysis. This book focuses on the different steps involved in the conception, implementation and application of EDAs that use Markov networks, and undirected models in general. It can serve as a general introduction to EDAs but covers also an important current void in the study of these algorithms by explaining the specificities and benefits of modeling optimization problems by means of undirected probabilistic models. All major developments to date in the progressive introduction of Markov networks based EDAs are reviewed in the book. Hot current research trends and future perspectives in the enhancement and applicability of EDAs are also covered. The contributions included in the book address topics as relevant as the application of probabilistic-based fitness models, the use of belief propagation algorithms in EDAs and the application of Markov network based EDAs to real-world optimization problems. The book should be of interest to researchers and practitioners from areas such as optimization, evolutionary computation, and machine learning.

This volume evolved from a conference on "Financial Markets Economet- rics" held at the ZEW (Zentrum fiir Europaische Wirtschaftsforschung) in Mannheim, Germany in February, 1992. However, not all papers included in this volume were presented at the conference. In some cases the papers are follow-up papers to the ones presented. The purpose of the conference was to bring together researchers from several European countries to discuss their applications of recent economet- ric methods to the analysis of financial markets. From a methodological point of view the main emphasis of the conference papers was on cointe- gration analysis and ARCH modelling. In . cointegration analysis the links between long-run components of time series are studied and the methods can .be applied to the determination of equilibrium relationships between the vari- ables, whereas ARCH models (ARCH is the acronym of autoregressive condi- tional heteroskedasticity) are concerned with the measurement and analysis of changing variances in time series. These two models have been the most significant innovations' for the empirical analysis of financial time series in recent years. Six papers of this volume apply cointegration analysis (the papers by MacDonald/Marsh, Hansen, Ronning, Garbers, Kirchgassner/Wolters, and Kunst/Polasek) and seven papers deal with ARCH models (Kramer/Runde, Drost, Kunst/Polasek, Kugler, Eggington/Hall, Koedijk/Stork/deVries, and Demos/Sentana/Shah). Other econometric methods and models applied in the papers include factor analysis (Eggington/Hall and Demos/Sentana/- Shah), vector autoregressions (Kirchgassner/Wolters and Kunst/Polasek), Markov-switching models (Garbers and Kaehler /Marnet), spectral analysis (Kirchgassner/Wolters), stable Paretian distributions (Kramer/Runde and Drost) and ARFIMA models (Drost).

The Analytic Hierarchy Process (AHP) is a prominent and powerful tool for making decisions in situations involving multiple objectives. Models, Methods, Concepts and Applications of the Analytic Hierarchy Process, 2nd Edition applies the AHP in order to solve problems focused on the following three themes: economics, the social sciences, and the linking of measurement with human values. For economists, the AHP offers a substantially different approach to dealing with economic problems through ratio scales. Psychologists and political scientists can use the methodology to quantify and derive measurements for intangibles. Meanwhile researchers in the physical and engineering sciences can apply the AHP methods to help resolve the conflicts between hard measurement data and human values. Throughout the book, each of these topics is explored utilizing real life models and examples, relevant to problems in today's society. This new edition has been updated and includes five new chapters that includes discussions of the following: - The eigenvector and why it is necessary - A summary of ongoing research in the Middle East that brings together Israeli and Palestinian scholars to develop concessions from both parties - A look at the Medicare Crisis and how AHP can be used to understand the problems and help develop ideas to solve them.

This tutorial presents a hands-on introduction to a new discrete choice modeling approach based on the behavioral notion of regret-minimization. This so-called Random Regret Minimization-approach (RRM) forms a counterpart of the Random Utility Maximization-approach (RUM) to discrete choice modeling, which has for decades dominated the field of choice modeling and adjacent fields such as transportation, marketing and environmental economics. Being as parsimonious as conventional RUM-models and compatible with popular software packages, the RRM-approach provides an alternative and appealing account of choice behavior. Rather than providing highly technical discussions as usually encountered in scholarly journals, this tutorial aims to allow readers to explore the RRM-approach and its potential and limitations hands-on and based on a detailed discussion of examples. This tutorial is written for students, scholars and practitioners who have a basic background in choice modeling in general and RUM-modeling in particular. It has been taken care of that all concepts and results should be clear to readers that do not have an advanced knowledge of econometrics.

Charles de Gaulle commence ses Memoires d'Espoir, ainsi: 'La France vient du fond des ages. Elle vito Les Siecles l'appellent. Mais elle demeure elle-meme au long du temps. Ses limites peuvent se modifier sans que changent Ie relief, Ie climat, les fleuves, les mers, qui la marquent indefmiment. Y habitent des peuples qu'etreignent, au cours de l'Histoire, les epreuves les plus diverses, mais que la nature des choses, utilisee par la politique, petrit sans cesse en une seule nation. Celle-ci a embrasse de nombreuses generations. Elle en comprend actuellement plusieurs. Elle en enfantera beaucoup d'autres. Mais, de par la geograpbie du pays qui est Ie sien, de par Ie genie des races qui la composent, de par les voisinages qui l'entourent, elle revet un caractere constant qui fait dependre de leurs peres les Fran ais de chaque epoque et les engage pour leurs descendants. A moins de se rompre, cet ensemble humain, sur ce territoire, au sein de cet univers, comporte donc un passe, un present, un avenir, indissolubles. Aussi l'ttat, qui repond de la France, est-il en charge, a la fois, de son heritage d'bier, de ses interets d'aujourd'hui et de ses espoirs de demain. ' A la lurniere de cette idee de nation, il est clair, qu'un dialogue entre nations est eminemment important et que la Semaine Universitaire Franco Neerlandaise est une institution pour stimuler ce dialogue."

The book details the innovative TERM (The Enormous Regional Model) approach to regional and national economic modeling, and explains the conversion from a comparative-static to a dynamic model. It moves on to an adaptation of TERM to water policy, including the additional theoretical and database requirements of the dynamic TERM-H2O model. In particular, it examines the contrasting economic impacts of water buyback policy and recurring droughts in the Murray-Darling Basin. South-east Queensland, where climate uncertainty has been borne out by record-breaking drought and the worst floods in living memory, provides a chapter-length case study. The exploration of the policy background and implications of TERM's dynamic modeling will provide food for thought in policy making circles worldwide, where there is a pressing need for solutions to similarly intractable problems in water management.

For courses in introductory econometrics. This package includes Pearson MyLab Economics. Engaging applications bring the theory and practice of modern econometrics to life Ensure students grasp the relevance of econometrics with Introduction to Econometrics -- the text that connects modern theory and practice with motivating, engaging applications. The 4th Edition, Global Edition, maintains a focus on currency, while building on the philosophy that applications should drive the theory, not the other way around. The text incorporates real-world questions and data, and methods that are immediately relevant to the applications. With very large data sets increasingly being used in economics and related fields, a new chapter dedicated to Big Data helps students learn about this growing and exciting area. This coverage and approach make the subject come alive for students and helps them to become sophisticated consumers of econometrics. Reach every student by pairing this text with Pearson MyLab Economics MyLab (TM) is the teaching and learning platform that empowers you to reach every student. By combining trusted author content with digital tools and a flexible platform, MyLab personalizes the learning experience and improves results for each student. Pearson MyLab Economics should only be purchased when required by an instructor. Please be sure you have the correct ISBN and Course ID. Instructors, contact your Pearson representative for more information.

An observational study is an empiric investigation of effects caused by treatments when randomized experimentation is unethical or infeasible. Observational studies are common in most fields that study the effects of treatments on people, including medicine, economics, epidemiology, education, psychology, political science and sociology. The quality and strength of evidence provided by an observational study is determined largely by its design. Design of Observational Studies is both an introduction to statistical inference in observational studies and a detailed discussion of the principles that guide the design of observational studies.

Design of Observational Studies is divided into four parts. Chapters 2, 3, and 5 of Part I cover concisely, in about one hundred pages, many of the ideas discussed in Rosenbaum's Observational Studies (also published by Springer) but in a less technical fashion. Part II discusses the practical aspects of using propensity scores and other tools to create a matched comparison that balances many covariates. Part II includes a chapter on matching in R. In Part III, the concept of design sensitivity is used to appraise the relative ability of competing designs to distinguish treatment effects from biases due to unmeasured covariates. Part IV discusses planning the analysis of an observational study, with particular reference to Sir Ronald Fisher's striking advice for observational studies, "make your theories elaborate."

The second edition of his book, Observational Studies, was published by Springer in 2002.