Accounting for breakout in Britain: The industrial revolution through a Malthusian lens

This paper introduces a simple dynamic model to examine the breakout from a Malthusian economy to a modern growth regime. It identifies several factors that determine the fastest rate at which the population can grow without engendering declining living standards. We then apply the framework to Britain and find a dramatic increase in sustainable population growth at the time of the Industrial Revolution, well before the beginning of modern levels of income growth. The main contributions to the British breakout were technological improvements and structural change away from agricultural production, while coal, capital, and trade played a minor role. In addition to solidifying the link between the Industrial Revolution and rising living standards, this research reconciles the gradualist and limited Crafts–Harley view of the Industrial Revolution with a dramatic and rapid change in Britain’s macroeconomic character.     

Another Approach to Data Envelopment Analysis in Noisy Environments: DEA+

In this paper a DEA+ labeled approach for efficiency measurement in the stochastic case is presented along with a consistency proof and some preliminary evidence illustrating the small sample performance. DEA+ can basically handle multi-output technologies like standard DEA but allows to filter noise, that might have disturbed production and unlike a related approach does not require panel data. Consistency of DEA+ relies on the assumption of i.i.d. distributed and bounded noise and requires radial efficiency measurement. First Monte Carlo experiments show that a DEA+ based average inefficiency estimator performs well for samples of size n=100 in one-output, two-input settings compared to the corresponding Stochastic Frontier Estimator. Sensitivity of DEA+ performance with respect to parametrization of noise is weak, but higher noise contribution requires much larger sample size for satisfactory results.     

Estimation methods for stochastic volatility models: a survey

Abstract.  Although stochastic volatility (SV) models have an intuitive appeal, their empirical application has been limited mainly due to difficulties involved in their estimation. The main problem is that the likelihood function is hard to evaluate. However, recently, several new estimation methods have been introduced and the literature on SV models has grown substantially. In this article, we review this literature. We describe the main estimators of the parameters and the underlying volatilities focusing on their advantages and limitations both from the theoretical and empirical point of view. We complete the survey with an application of the most important procedures to the S&P 500 stock price index.     

非参数核密度估计在异方差模型中的应用

针对非参数核密度估计中最优窗宽的选择在实际建模中的不足,提出了一个新的最优窗宽选择的迭代方法,克服了使用传统的经验法则所带来的局限性。并在此基础上用一种新的非参数核密度估计ML方法应用到了中国股票市场,通过与极大似然估计对比论证了此方法的有效性和可行性。实证分析表明,通过与实际值的模拟对比,运用非参数估计技术得到上证指数日收益率的拟合值要优于极大似然估计的拟合值。     

Optimal investment with vintage capital: Equilibrium distributions

The paper concerns the study of equilibrium points, or steady states, of economic systems arising in modeling optimal investment with vintage capital, namely, systems where all key variables (capitals, investments, prices) are indexed not only by time but also by age. Capital accumulation is hence described as a partial differential equation (briefly, PDE), and equilibrium points are in fact equilibrium distributions in the variable of ages. A general method is developed to compute and study equilibrium points of a wide range of infinite dimensional, infinite horizon, optimal control problems. We apply the method to optimal investment with vintage capital, for a variety of data, deriving existence and uniqueness of equilibrium distribution, as well as analytic formulas for optimal controls and trajectories in the long run. The examples suggest that the same method can be applied to other economic problems displaying heterogeneity. This shows how effective the theoretical machinery of optimal control in infinite dimension is in computing explicitly equilibrium distributions. To this extent, the results of this work constitute a first crucial step towards a thorough understanding of the behavior of optimal paths in the long run.     

GMM estimation of a maximum entropy distribution with interval data

We develop a generalized method of moments (GMM) estimator for the distribution of a variable where summary statistics are available only for intervals of the random variable. Without individual data, one cannot calculate the weighting matrix for the GMM estimator. Instead, we propose a simulated weighting matrix based on a first-step consistent estimate. When the functional form of the underlying distribution is unknown, we estimate it using a simple yet flexible maximum entropy density. Our Monte Carlo simulations show that the proposed maximum entropy density is able to approximate various distributions extremely well. The two-step GMM estimator with a simulated weighting matrix improves the efficiency of the one-step GMM considerably. We use this method to estimate the U.S. income distribution and compare these results with those based on the underlying raw income data.     

A semi-analytic method for valuing high-dimensional options on the maximum and minimum of multiple assets

Valuing high-dimensional options has many important applications in finance but when the true distributions are unknown or complex, numerical approximations must be used. Approximation methods based on Monte-Carlo simulation show a steep trade-off between estimation accuracy and computational efficiency. This article presents an alternative semi-analytic approximation method for pricing options on the maximum or minimum of multiple assets with unknown distributions. Computational efficiency is shown to improve significantly without sacrificing estimation accuracy. The method is illustrated with applications to options on underlying assets with mean-reverting prices, time-dependent correlations, and stochastic volatility The authors would like to thank the two anonymous referees, the associate editor, and Dr. Jess H. Chua at the University of Calgary for valuable comments and insights on this research. This research was partly supported by NUS grant R-146-000-059-112     

基于风险的银行绩效评价方法

随着全球经济一体化程度的加深,银行之间的竞争日趋激烈.如何做好银行的绩效评价工作直接关系到银行未来的发展.传统的银行绩效评价工作多数侧重于静态的财务指标分析,这种分析方法最大的缺点在于无法对银行面对的瞬息万变的金融市场的风险情况及银行未来发展能力进行有效的预测及评价.RAROC绩效评价法是对传统银行绩效评价方法的改进.这种方法将风险带来的未来可预计损失量化为当期成本,直接对当期盈利进行调整,衡量经风险调整后的收益大小,并考虑为可能的最大风险做出资本储备.该方法将银行的收益与银行所承担的风险相结合考核银行的经营效绩,缩小了管理者与出资人之间的目标差距,对改进我国商业银行的绩效评价方法具有积极意义.     

The impact of MAS on perceived auditor independence-some evidence from Denmark

The Enron case has highlighted that the provision of management advisory services (MAS) can endanger auditor independence. Recently, a number of changes have not only been made to the relevant international and US regulations, but also to the Danish regulations in this area. Theoretical research explains the emergence of non-independence and demonstrates that the provision of MAS can decrease independence. According to the economic model of DeAngelo, the existence of client-specific quasi-rents impairs auditor independence. The provision of MAS increases quasi-rents and thus, is a threat to independence. Antle used an agency theoretical approach. Information asymmetries between auditor and client could lead to a moral hazard risk, i.e. the auditor could give up independence from client's management and accept payments for withholding detected errors and irregularities. The client's management could also use MAS to legally compensate the auditor for giving away independence.A large number of empirical studies have investigated the influence of MAS on the perceived independence of the auditor. Most of these studies were performed in English speaking countries and the majority found a negative impact. Sociological research reveals cultural differences between English speaking and Nordic countries, e.g. concerning the dimension ‘masculinity’. Thus, an empirical investigation of the impact of MAS on perceived auditor independence in Denmark is promising. It was found that shareholders, bank loan officers and journalists perceive a negative effect on auditor independence if MAS are provided. The recent liberalization in Denmark is inconsistent with this finding. Furthermore, it was shown that the type of MAS influences the degree to which auditor independence is perceived to be impaired. Thus, independence rules related to MAS should be differentiated. Additionally, the study ascertained that perceived auditor independence does not increase if MAS are provided by a separate department of the audit firm. An internal separation of the auditing and the consulting function within the same audit firm is not viewed as being beneficial in Denmark.     

American-style options in jump-diffusion models: estimation and evaluation

We propose dynamic programming coupled with finite elements for valuing American-style options under Gaussian and double exponential jumps à la Merton [J. Financ. Econ., 1976, 3, 125–144] and Kou [Manage. Sci., 2002, 48, 1086–1101], and we provide a proof of uniform convergence. Our numerical experiments confirm this convergence result and show the efficiency of the proposed methodology. We also address the estimation problem and report an empirical investigation based on Home Depot. Jump-diffusion models outperform their pure-diffusion counterparts.