The Basel II framework strictly defines the conditions under which financial institutions are authorized to accept real estate as collateral in order to decrease their credit risk. A widely used concept for its valuation is the hedonic approach. It assumes, that a property can be characterized...

In this paper, we propose a generic Bayesian framework for inference in distributional regression models in which each parameter of a potentially complex response distribution and not only the mean is related to a structured additive predictor. The latter is composed additively of a variety of...

In this paper, we propose a unified Bayesian approach for multivariate structured additive distributional regression analysis where inference is applicable to a huge class of multivariate response distributions, comprising continuous, discrete and latent models, and where each parameter of these...

There has been much recent interest in Bayesian inference for generalized additive and related models. The increasing popularity of Bayesian methods for these and other model classes is mainly caused by the introduction of Markov chain Monte Carlo (MCMC) simulation techniques which allow...

Despite improvements in global child health within the last three decades, under-5 mortality remains significantly high in Sub-Saharan and Asia. Both regions did not achieve the MDG target of reducing under-5 mortality by two thirds by 2015. The underlying causes of under-5 mortality differ...

Anthropometric indicators, in particular the height for a particular age, are found to be lowest in South Asia compared to other geopolitical regions. However, despite the close relationship between undernutrition and mortality rates, the highest mortality rates are concentrated in sub-Saharan...

This paper deals with the effects of entry into motherhood on women’s employment dynamics. Our analysis is based on the complete lifetime working- and income histories of a 1% sample of all persons born between 1934 and 1971 and employed in West Germany sometime between 1975 and 1995. We use...