It turns out that price index functions share a basic interpretation; practically all of them measure a change in some average of quality-adjusted prices. The different options are distinguished by their choice of average, their definition of quality, and their stance on what I label ‘equal...

We reconsider the question of what determines corruption at the cross-national level, using new data and methods. Unlike previous studies that rely on perception or survey-based data that have been the subject of criticisms, we employ a new dataset of observed cases of cross-border graft, where...

I consider the “supply-side” of corruption in the context of international bribery, which I define as firms bribing public officials abroad. I present the “Bribe Payers Corruption Index” (BPCI), a non perception-based measure of cross-border corruption, which is coherent with a simple...

This paper uses mixed combinatorial-cum-real particle swarm method to obtain a heuristically optimal order in which the constituent variables can be arranged so as to yield some generalized maximum entropy synthetic indicators that represent the constituent variables in the best...

Pena's method of construction of a synthetic indicator is very sensitive to the order in which the constituent variables (whose linear aggregation yields the synthetic indicator) are arranged. Due to this, Pena's method can at present give only an arbitrary synthetic indicator whose...

The paper presents a revision of the contemporary reductionistic demand theory, replacing the studying object, i.e. an individual, with a fuzzy collection of market buyers, regarded as a “statistical ensemble of consumers”. The new holistic market demand theory formally retains the...

Policy makers depend on economists, statisticians, and other social scientists to make accurate observations and draw solid conclusions from quantitative analysis. Econometrics, for example, has come a long way in the past century and guides many decisions made today. On the other hand, some...

To their credit, empirical legal scholars try to live up to the highest methodological standards from the social sciences. But these standards do not always match the legal research question. This paper focuses on normative legal argument based on empirical evidence. Whether there is a normative...

We analyze the distributional properties of ownership concentration measures and find that measures come from different underlying statistical distributions. Consistent with theory, some measures that are classified to represent a monitoring dimension have a positive influence on firm performance;...

In this paper, we take stock of how statistical agencies in different nations are currently accounting for housing in their consumer price indexes (CPIs). The rental equivalence and user cost approaches have been favorites of economists. Both can be derived from the fundamental equation of...