In econometric modelling the choice of relevant variables is of crucial importance for the Interpretation of the results. In many cases it is based on some a priori knowledge from economic theory and a rather heuristic procedure for determining other influential variables sometimes based on an...

The assessment of models of financial market behavior requires evaluation tools. When complexity hinders a direct estimation approach, e.g., for agent based microsimulation models or complex multifractal models, simulation based estimators might provide an alternative. In order to apply such...

Estimation and modelling problems as they arise in many fields often turn out to be intractable by standard numerical methods. One way to deal with such a situation consists in simplifying models and procedures. However, the solutions to these simplified problems might not be satisfying. A...