Winning methods for forecasting tourism time series

We constituted Team “Lee C. Baker”, which won the online tourism forecasting competition. Our forecasts had the smallest MASE for the first part of the competition involving 518 annual time series, and the second smallest MASE for the second part of the competition involving 427 quarterly time series and 366 monthly time series. In this article, we briefly describe the methods we used.     

跨越鸿沟的五大应对之策

那些对社会政治问题于企业之重要性始终心存疑问的管理者在看过《麦肯锡季刊》对这一问题所做的引人注目的民意调查后，一定会疑云顿消。     

Experts and quacks

What happens when “type” is endogenous in a reputational setting? Here, customers cannot tell “experts” from imitative “quacks,” but gain information through repeated interaction. Firm incentives to invest in expertise vary nonmonotonically in how tolerant customers are of bad outcomes; more tolerant customers are both more forgiving, making expertise less necessary, and longer tenured, increasing the value of retaining them. In equilibrium, the proportion of expert firms is bounded away from one; some quacks are necessary to keep incentives of experts in line. The fraction of experts is decreasing in customers' switching costs and the relative cost of expertise over quackery.     

Primetime Spin: Media Bias and Belief Confirming Information

This paper develops a model of media bias in which rational agents acquire all their news from the source that is most likely to confirm their prior beliefs. Despite only wishing to make the correct decision, agents act as if they enjoy receiving news that supports their preconceptions. By exclusively gathering information from a source biased towards his prior, there is little chance an agent will be persuaded to change his mind. Moreover, it is shown that even an unbiased agent prefers to receive biased news as it is unlikely to produce conflicting reports. The media caters to the informational demands of consumers and accordingly slants its reporting. It is shown that competition may not decrease bias, but may actually enhance it. Finally, even when it increases bias, competition may improve welfare by expanding the market for news.     

A Simple Explanation of the Forecast Combination Puzzle*

This article presents a formal explanation of the forecast combination puzzle, that simple combinations of point forecasts are repeatedly found to outperform sophisticated weighted combinations in empirical applications. The explanation lies in the effect of finite‐sample error in estimating the combining weights. A small Monte Carlo study and a reappraisal of an empirical study by Stock and Watson [Federal Reserve Bank of Richmond Economic Quarterly (2003) Vol. 89/3, pp. 71–90] support this explanation. The Monte Carlo evidence, together with a large‐sample approximation to the variance of the combining weight, also supports the popular recommendation to ignore forecast error covariances in estimating the weight.     

风险管理在企业财资管理中日趋重要

长远来看,我们预期风险管理议程会对企业决策起到更大作用。这将使财资管理者在制定业务策略过程中成为很有影响力的角色。风险管理在财资管理的每一项决策中都是必不可少的要素。虽然财资管理工作的一项经常任务就是风险     

The measurement and trend of inequality: An amendment to a basic revision

A variety of revisions and adjustments to our standard measures of inequality have been proposed in recent years. This note corrects a serious error in that work which could reverse conclusions in instances of great inequality.     

Productivity in manufacturing and the length of the working day: evidence from the 1880 census of manufactures

Using micro-level data from the 1880 Census of Manufacturing, we estimate the elasticity of annual output with respect to the length of the working day. Holding labor and capital inputs constant and controlling for days of operation per month and months per year, this elasticity was positive but less than one, indicating diminishing returns. We also find diminishing returns to days per month and months per year, but these elasticities were significantly larger. Thus, decreases in daily hours coupled with an offsetting rise in annual days of operation would increase productive efficiency—precisely the kinds of changes then actually taking place.