Likelihood,Replicability and Robbins' Confidence Sequences

The widely claimed replicability crisis in science may lead to revised standards of significance. The customary frequentist confidence intervals, calibrated through hypothetical repetitions of the experiment that is supposed to have produced the data at hand, rely on a feeble concept of replicability. In particular, contradictory conclusions may be reached when a substantial enlargement of the study is undertaken. To redefine statistical confidence in such a way that inferential conclusions are non-contradictory, with large enough probability, under enlargements of the sample, we give a new reading of a proposal dating back to the 60s, namely, Robbins' confidence sequences. Directly bounding the probability of reaching, in the future, conclusions that contradict the current ones, Robbins' confidence sequences ensure a clear-cut form of replicability when inference is performed on accumulating data. Their main frequentist property is easy to understand and to prove. We show that Robbins' confidence sequences may be justified under various views of inference: they are likelihood-based, can incorporate prior information and obey the strong likelihood principle. They are easy to compute, even when inference is on a parameter of interest, especially using a closed form approximation from normal asymptotic theory.     

Selection of enterprise resource planning software using analytic hierarchy process

Selecting ERP (Enterprise Resource Planning) software is crucial to enhance productivity because it provides high-quality services for end users. The choice of an ERP is a problem that should undertake deeper scrutiny. For example, several criteria are usually present, having different tradeoffs. Analysts and managers, when deciding which ERP to acquire, have key considerations to address when facing the myriad of available software suites with market presence. Multicriteria modelling are used to help decision makers select ERPs and one commonly used technique for helping the process of addressing such problems is Analytic Hierarchy Process (AHP). Our work have surveyed the literature on selection of ERP and we have discovered that acquisition and monthly costs, ERP reputation and references, level of support and training, deployment experience, ERP’s feature set, easiness of use, efficiency and reliability, and maintainability are key criteria. We have used those criteria to create an AHP model for deciding the best one according to judgements of importance. The focus of our work is directed for small and medium organizations. We have created a model for ERP selection of a healthcare facility and computed numerical results using pairwise comparisons and group decision-making by selected managers according to their expertise.     

Investor protection and income inequality: Risk sharing vs risk taking

This paper studies the relationship between investor protection and income inequality. In the presence of market frictions, better protection makes investors more willing to take on entrepreneurial risk when lending to firms, thereby improving the degree of risk sharing between financiers and entrepreneurs. On the other hand, by increasing risk sharing, investor protection also induces more risk taking. By increasing entrepreneurial risk taking, it raises income dispersion. By reducing the risk faced by entrepreneurs, it reduces income volatility. As a result, the relationship between investor protection and income inequality is non monotonic, since the risk-taking effect dominates at low levels of investor protection, while risk sharing becomes stronger when more risk is taken. Empirical evidence from up to sixty-seven countries spanning the period 1976–2004 supports the predictions of the model.     

Forecasting accuracy of wind power technology diffusion models across countries

Wind power technology is analyzed in terms of diffusion, with incentive effects introduced as exogenous dynamics in the Generalized Bass Model (GBM) framework. Estimates and short-term forecasts of the life-cycles of wind power are provided for the US and Europe, as they have similar geographic areas, as well as for some leading European countries. GBMs have the best performance in model selection, and are ranked first in terms of forecast accuracy over a set of different accuracy measures and forecasting horizons, relative to the Standard Bass, Logistic, and Gompertz models.     

Public discourse and cosmopolitan political identity: Imagining the European Union citizen

European Union citizenship has thus far been constructed largely in national and economic terms, which are unlikely to redeem the promise of a rich and vibrant political future in the wake of the EU constitution. Therefore, one of the central challenges facing scholars, political leaders and citizens is to fashion new argumentative spaces that enable citizens to forge cosmopolitan political identities that may help to fulfill the vision of alternative futures. This paper addresses the rhetorical dimensions of European Union citizenship as it focuses on public discourse as constitutive of new models of political participation and engagement. Tracing the idea of citizenship in the writings of Hannah Arendt, Immanuel Kant, and Giambattista Vico, discourse and imagination become necessary for a new dimension of European Union citizenship.¹     

LOCAL RISK MINIMIZATION FOR DEFAULTABLE MARKETS

We study the local risk minimization approach for defaultable markets in a general setting where the asset price dynamics and the default time may influence each other. We find the Föllmer-Schweizer decomposition in this general setting and compute it explicitly in two particular cases, when default time depends on the risky asset's behavior and when only a dependence of discounted asset price on default time is occurring.     

Financial integration, productivity and capital accumulation

Understanding the mechanism through which financial globalization affects economic performance is crucial for evaluating the costs and benefits of opening financial markets. This paper is a first attempt at disentangling the effects of financial integration on the two main determinants of economic performance: productivity (TFP) and investment. I provide empirical evidence from a sample of 70 countries observed between 1975 and 1999. The results for both de jure and de facto indicators suggest that financial integration has a positive direct effect on productivity, while it does not directly affect capital accumulation. I also control for indirect effects of financial globalization through financial development and banking and currency crises. While financial integration does not systematically increase domestic financial depth, it may raise the likelihood of banking crises, though only to a minor extent. Yet, the overall effect of financial liberalization remains positive for productivity and negligible for investment.     

The Role of Market Size in the Formation of Jurisdictions

Administrative and political reorganization is being actively debated even in the mature, stable economies of Western Europe. This paper investigates the possibility that such a reorganization is tied to the integration of economic markets. The paper describes a model where heterogeneous individuals form coalitions for the provision of a public good and shows that the number and composition of these jurisdictions depend on the overall size of the market. The range of economic activities engaged in by jurisdiction members increases when the size of the market increases, and so does the range of their preferences over the public good. The result is a change in the endogenous borders of the jurisdictions, and a reorganization of all coalitions. The optimal number of jurisdictions is unique and increases with market size. In the absence of compensating transfers, however, the decentralized equilibrium need not be optimal and is not unique, although