This paper investigates the hypotheses that the recently established Mexican stock index futures market effectively serves the price discovery function, and that the introduction of futures trading has provoked volatility in the underlying spot market. We test both hypotheses simultaneously with...

Essays in Empirical Finance: Evaluating Risk in FinancialMarketsBy Alysa V. ShcherbakovaThis dissertation is comprised of two parts, each addressing animportant type of financial risk. The first part is composed of anessay discussing Market Risk. This essay examines a causalrelationship between...

The traditional searching method for model-order selection in linear regression is a nested full-parameters-set searching procedure over the desired orders, which we call full-model order selection. On the other hand, a method for model-selection searches for the best sub-model within each...

Biased estimation has the advantage of reducing the mean squared error (MSE) of an estimator. The question of interest is how biased estimation affects model selection. In this paper, we introduce biased estimation to a range of model selection criteria. Specifically, we analyze the performance...

We study model selection strategies based on penalized empirical loss minimization. We point out a tight relationship between error estimation and data-based complexity penalization: any good error estimate may be converted into a data-based penalty function and the performance of the estimate...

Florax et al. [Florax, R.J.G.M., Folmer, H., Rey, S.J., 2003. Specification searches in spatial econometrics: the relevance of Hendry's methodology. Regional Science and Urban Economics, 33, 557–579] undertook a simulation study designed to assess the properties of various selection strategies...

The properties of automatic model selection are discussed, focusing on PcGets. We explain the background concepts and why automatic methods can perform well. Criticisms of model selection procedures are noted and rebutted. The algorithm is sketched, distinguishing between costs of search and...

This paper investigates a comprehensive assessment of firm strategic behavior under financial market uncertainty. A general theoretical model of market value maximization (MVM) is constructed using a traditional capital asset pricing format. The model built on the nonlinear Almost Ideal Demand...

This dissertation consists of five independent projects. In each project, a novelstatistical method was developed to address a practical problem encountered in genomiccontexts. For example, we considered testing for constant nonparametric effectsin a general semiparametric regression model in...

Zero-inflated data abound in ecological studies as well as in other scientific and quantitative fields. Nonparametric regression with zero-inflated response may be studied via the zero-inflated generalized additive model (ZIGAM). ZIGAM assumes that the conditional distribution of the response...