This paper provides a critical analysis of the possible methods, data sources and the existing results of the field of 'the economic costs of mass violent conflict' by identifying strengths and weaknesses of the existing literature. The report evaluates content, methods, and data sources of the...

For over five decades, diffusion indexes have been widely used by statistical and economic agencies as an instrument to summarize the dynamics of a group of disaggregated time-series economic data. In this note we revise the methods for constructing diffusion indexes, propose a novel generalized...

In this research we develop generalized diffusion indexes for the Mexican state and sectorial economic activity. These indexes summarize the dynamics of the local cycles in a way that they are consistent with the aggregate economic activity. The proposed index includes three dimensions of the...

This study investigates the price volatility of metals, using the GARCH and GJR models. First we examine the persistence of volatility and the leverage effect across metal markets taking into account the presence of outliers, and second we estimate the effects of oil price shocks on the price...

Few papers provide research about options returns, and the few available are focused in the analysis from the perspective of the long side of the option contract, i.e. the buyer that pays the price and her expected and realized option return. The main point of our research work is to provide a...

In recent years, the Nigerian Stock Exchange (NSE) has witnessed an unprecedented growth in market capitalization, membership, value and volume traded. By December 2007, the All Share Index has grown massively over 57,990.2 from 1113.4 in January 1993. This rising interest in investment...

Classical regression analysis uses partial coefficients to measure the influences of some variables (regressors) on another variable (regressand). However, a descriptive point of view shows that these coefficients are very bad measures of influence. Their interpretation as an average change of...

This paper constructs the probability space underlying the random variable of any time dependent econometric specification. The construction links concrete economic activity, both perceived and recorded, and econometric formulations. Furthermore, it is argued that the probability events...

Explained variance (R^2) is a familiar summary of the fit of a linear regression and has been generalized in various ways to multilevel (hierarchical) models. The multilevel models we consider in this paper are characterized by hierarchical data structures in which individuals are grouped into...

Reliability has been largely applied to industrial systems in order to study the various possibilities of systems’ failure. The goal is to establish the chain of events leading to any system’s failure, namely the top event. Looking for the minimal paths leading to any system’s fault allows...