In our paper we investigate how network effects influence the dynamics of oligopoly on mature telecommunication markets. The model covers four categories of agents: telecommunication operators, customers joined into housholds and market regulator. The market state aware firms use reinforcement...

This paper sets out first, to quantify the stabilization gains from commitment in terms of household welfare and second, to examine how commitment to an optimal or approximately optimal rule can be sustained as an equilibrium in which reneging hardly ever occurs. We utilize an influential...

Efficient algorithms for diagnosing influential data points are investigated. Techniques examining potentially influential subsets are considered. Given a list of candidate observations, a new row-dropping algorithm (RDA) computes all possible observation-subset regression models. It employs a...

Population aging threatens to severely destabilize the public finances of a majority of European countries. This unfavorable demographic prospect is usually reinforced by a widespread tendency to anticipate retirement. Reversing this tendency has been identified as a crucial factor to improve...

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...

A system of agents interacting in a network with a globalization-polaritation transition is studied in the context of a cultural dissemination model. We consider different types of fields interpreted as forms of mass media acting on the system. Both for autonomous and external fields,...

The last couple of decades has witnessed a growing interest in hedge funds. Academics and practitioners are intrigued by the distinct characteristics of these investment vehicles: hedge funds are flexible with respect to the types of securities they hold and the type of positions they take; they...

Understanding the value a customer has to a business is a fundamental problem. Accurate valuations are critical for setting appropriate levels of investment for targeted marketing and for the setting of individual customer service levels. Traditionally semi-qualitative methods using results from...

We consider one-period maximin portfolios to hedge the interest-rate risk of default-free and option-free bond portfolios. Our framework allows for general changes on the interest rates, and neither requires the specification of the yield curve dynamic nor the estimation of a model. We make...

We use parametric power ARCH models of the conditional variance of inflation and monthly data in Germany, the Netherlands and Sweden for the period 1962-2004 to examine the relationship between inflation and inflation uncertainty. In two out of the three countries inflation significantly raises...