We provide a fast algorithm for calculating the fractional difference of a time series. In standard implementations, the calculation speed (number of arithmetic operations) is of order T^2, where T is the length of the time series. Our algorithm allows calculation speed of order T log(T). For...

The seasonal stability tests of Canova & Hansen (1995) (CH) provide a method complementary to that of Hylleberg et al. (1990) for testing for seasonal unit roots. But the distribution of the CH tests are unknown in small samples. We present a method to numerically compute critical values and...

This study aims to describe the size distribution of Portuguese firms, as measured by annual sales and total assets, between 2006 and 2012, giving an economic interpretation for the evolution of the distribution along the time. Three distributions are fitted to data: the lognormal, the Pareto...

Parameter uncertainty has been a recurrent subject treated in the financial literature. The normative portfolio selection approach considers two main kinds of decision rules: expected expected utility maximization and mean-variance criterion. Assuming that the mean-variance criterion is a good...

This paper proposes a novel method of global optimization based on cuckoo-host co-evaluation. It also develops a Fortran-77 code for the algorithm. The algorithm has been tested on 96 benchmark functions (of which the results of 30 relatively harder problems have been reported). The proposed...

The Brownian correlation has been recently introduced by Székely et al. (2007; 2009), which has an attractive property that when it is zero, it guarantees independence. This paper investigates into the effects and advantages, if any, of replacement of the Pearsonian coefficient of correlation (r)...

We describe an algorithm to efficiently compute maximum entropy densities, i.e. densities maximizing the Shannon entropy - [image omitted]  under a set of constraints [image omitted] . Our method is based on an algorithm by Zellner and Highfield, which has been found not to converge under a...

Computing a numerical solution to a periodic optimal control problem is difficult. A method of approximating a solution to a given (stochastic) optimal control problem using Markov chains was developed in [3]. This paper describes an attempt at applying this method to a periodic optimal control...

Relaxation algorithms provide a powerful method of finding noncooperative equilibria in general synchronous games. Through use of the Nikaido-Isoda function, the Nash solution to a broad category of constrained, multiplayer, non-zerosum games can easily be found. We provide solutions to some...

This paper describes reweight, a Stata module to reweight survey data to external aggregate totals.