Structural changes were the main focus of many studies in recent years. Changes which alter the socio-economic status of a nation from deprived and traditional nature to a developed and modern one. The main hypothesis of this study is that, the economic development does not occur through a...

This paper addresses the question of whether neural networks, a realistic cognitive model of the human information processing, can learn to backward induce in a two stage game with a unique subgame-perfect Nash Equilibrium. The result that the neural networks only learn a heuristic that...

In this paper we develop tests of functional form that are consistent against a class of nonlinear "smooth transition" models of the conditional mean. Our method is an extension of the consistent model specification tests developed by Bierens (1990), de Jong (1996) and Bierens and Ploberger...

In some cases, currency crises are followed by strong recessions (e.g., recent Asian and Argentinean crises), but in other cases they are not. This paper uses Self-Organizing Maps (SOM) to search for meaningful associations between speculative attacks' real effects and 28 variables that...

This paper develops a flexible multi-dimensional assessment method for the comparison of different statistical-econometric techniques based on learning mechanisms, with a view to analysing and forecasting regional labour markets. The aim of this paper is twofold. A first major objective is to...

En este trabajo se estudia la rentabilidad de la empresa agroalimentaria en Andalucía (España)mediante un conjunto de ratios, elaborados por el Instituto de Estadística de Andalucía a partir de la Central de Balances de Actividades Empresariales de Andalucía. El objeto es encontrar las...

The aim of this paper is to develop and apply Neural Network (NN) models in order to forecast regional employment patterns in Germany. NNs are statistical tools based on learning algorithms with a distribution over a large amount of quantitative data. NNs are increasingly deployed in the social...

Through explicitly incorporating analysts' forecasts as observable factors in a dynamic arbitrage- free model of the yield curve, this paper proposes a framework for studying the impact of shifts in market sentiment on interest rates of all maturities. An empirical examination reveals that...

In this paper we examine the problem of finding investors' reservation option prices and corresponding early exercise policies of American- style options in the market with proportional transaction costs using the utility based approach proposed by Davis and Zariphopoulou (1995). We present a...