The pricing of American options has been widely acknowledged as “a much more intriguing” problem in financial engineering. In this paper, a “convergency-proved” IFE (inverse finite element) approach is introduced to the field of financial engineering to price American options for the...

Implicit finite difference methods are conventionally preferred over their explicit counterparts for the numerical valuation of options. In large part the reason for this is a severe stability constraint known as the Courant-Friedrichs-Lewy (CFL) condition which limits the latter class's...

Estimation of volatility of financial time series plays a crucial role in pricing derivatives. Volatility is often estimated from historical data; however, it is well known that volatility varies in time. We propose a method to choose a suitable length of historical data to estimate contemporary...

This paper presents empirical evidence on convergence of per capita output for regions within six large middle-income Latin American countries: Argentina, Brazil, Chile, Colombia, Mexico, and Peru. It explores the role played by several exogenous sectoral shocks and differences in steady states...

This paper analyzes the geographical distribution of physicians across the 26 cantons of Switzerland from 1960 to 1998. We use a dynamic location model to explain physicians' choice for their practices by considering market characteristics and medical infrastructure. Our panel data analysis...

In this paper we approach the issue of social cohesion across local labour markets in Poland. We analyse regional dynamics of unemployment rates and try to evaluate the impact of Active Labour Market Policies (ALMPs) in observed trends. Using data from 1999 till 2008 we employ tools typically...

In this paper we develop several regression algorithms for solving general stochastic optimal control problems via Monte Carlo. This type of algorithms is particularly useful for problems with a highdimensional state space and complex dependence structure of the underlying Markov process with...

In this paper we approach the regional unemployment dynamics in Poland. Using policy relevant NUTS4 level data for 1999 till 2006 we employ tools typically applied to income convergence analyses to inquire the patterns of unemployment distribution. We apply diverse analytical techniques to seek...