This paper builds on our previous work that used a non linear stochastic dynamic programming problem to solve for the optimal level of phosphorus discharged into a watershed. Typically, there is a trade off between profits from agriculture and environmental damage due to excessive levels of...

The conference of Kyoto 1997 instutionalized a new and important economic instrument for environmental protection, the Joint Implementation Progran (JI). The concept of Joint Implementation involves a bilateral or multilateral deal in which countries facing high pollution abatment costs invest...

We develop extensions of the variance-ratio statistic for testing the hypothesis a time series is uncorrelated and investigate their finite-sample performance. The tests employ an estimator of the asymptotic covariance matrix of the sample autocorrelations that is consistent under the null for...

In this paper, we investigate the out-of-sample forecasting ability of a genetic program to approach the dynamic evolution of the Yen/US$ and Pound Sterling/US$ exchange rates, and verify whether the method can beat the random walk model. Later on, we use the predicted values to generate a...

This paper shows how a high level matrix programming language may be used to perform Monte Carlo simulation, bootstrapping, estimation by maximum likelihood and GMM, and kernel regression in parallel on symmetric multiprocessor computers or clusters of workstations. The implementation of...

Estimation of Default Probabilities is critical to the correct pricing of credit derivatives and determining the appropriate level of reserves to support credit risky activities (Basel II). Given that credit default swaps (CDS) reflect the market consensus on default probability (with a direct...

An effective and easy-to-implement frequency filter is designed by convolving a Hamming window with the ideal rectangular filter response function. Three other filters, Hodrick-Prescott, Baxter-King, and Christiano-Fitzgerald, are critically reviewed. The behavior of the Hamming-windowed filter...

Within the independent private-values paradigm, we derive the data-generating process of the winning bid for the last unit sold at multi-unit, sequential English auctions when bidder valuations are draws from different distributions; i.e., in the presence of asymmetries. When the identity of the...

This paper proposes a method for estimating the probability density of a variable of interest in the presence of model ambiguity. In the first step, each candidate parametric model is estimated minimizing the Kullback-Leibler "distance" (KLD) from a reference nonparametric density estimate....