"Die Armutsmessung der empirischen Sozialforschung ist von einer Reihe von Annahmen und Setzungen abhängig, die Ausmaß und Struktur der Armutsbevölkerung beeinflussen. Äquivalenzskalen, Ermittlung des mittleren Einkommens als Referenzgröße und die Festlegung von Armutsschwellen führen zu...

This paper integrates the literature of Mortgage Design with that of Rotating Savings and Credit Associations (ROSCAs) to present a novel way of mortgage financing (with a zero interest rate) using cooperatives. This mode of financing dissipates credit (default) risk better than the normal mode...

We introduce a ''new'' algorithm that can be used to solve stochastic dynamic general equilibrium models. This approach exploits the fact that the equations defining equilibrium can be viewed as set of algebraic equations in the neighborhood of the steady-state. Then a recursive scheme, which...

The lion’s share of hidden Markov models (HMMs) /Markov regime switching models considered in economic research incorporates a comparably small number of states. The popularity of models with mostly two or three states principally results from their good interpretability: often regime...

DSGE models are customarily built in the presence of uncertainties of various levels, such as the specification of behavioural equations of economic agents, the actual values of model parameters, and so on. When the degree of complexity of the model structure and its parameterization increases,...

Particle swarm optimization (PSO) is a population based stochastic optimization technique. PSO is similar to optimization with Genetic Algorithms (GA). In PSO, the potential solutions (particles) move through the problem space by following the current optimum particles. Experience shows that PSO...

In the standard models of North-South technological-knowledge diffusion, the larger the initial technological-knowledge gap between countries is, the higher the Southern catching up. However, this result does not adjust well to Southern reality as a whole. The purpose of this paper is to...

The problem of convexity runs deeply in economic theory. For example, increasing returns or upward slopes (convexity) and diminishing returns or downward slopes (concavity) of certain supply, demand, production and utility relations are often assumed in economics. Quite frequently, however, the...

We use two stage optimal control techniques to solve some adoption problems. We first consider the case of an isolated economy, which therefore takes its decisions in exclusive accordance with its own preferences and constraints. The planner has to decide whether the economy has to switch to a...

For good reasons, it is standard practice to remove trends before linearizing a growth model. This paper explores an alternative strategy that consists in computing local approximations around successive points in the state space. Obviously this is terribly inefficiant it trend removal is...