One of the most important factors to control for the achievements of investment portfolio returns is risk. If we only think that a 100% positive return is needed to recover a portfolio loss of 50%, we can understand why. With the advent of the exponential growth of technology usage in markets,...

Model selection and model combination is a general problem in many areas. Especially, when we have several different candidate models and also have gathered a new data set, we want to construct a more accurate and precise model in order to help predict future events. In this paper, we propose a...

A general statistical modeling problem is that given a class of competing models and new data, how one can improve the overall model performance. In general, there exist two solutions for this problem, namely model selection and model combination. Model selection is to select a single best model...

This paper is intended to solve a central problem in recently developed feature-based model combination method (Xu and Golay, 2005), that is, how to choose candidate models. Through our analysis, we first conclude that the efficiency of model combination highly depends on the choice of candidate...

Model selection has become a central task in science. The classical model selection such as variable selection in multiple linear regression delivers interpretable models, but its instability is also well known. On the other hand, some shrinkage estimators enjoy the property of stability. To...

This paper addresses an important issue in model combination, that is, model locality. Since usually a global linear model is unable to reflect nonlinearity and to characterize local features, especially in a complex system, we propose a mixture of local feature models in order to overcome these...

This paper contributes to the existing literature by examining the efficiency and competitiveness of the Takaful insurance. We employ the Data Envelopment Analysis (DEA) to compute the efficiency of Takaful operators, while Panzar-Rosse (P-R) H-statistic method is used to evaluate the degree of...

Purpose This study examines the efficiency of Senior Secondary Schools, in the Region of Central Macedonia in Greece, using input-oriented Data Envelopment Analysis, with three inputs and two outputs variables. Data concern schools in urban, semi-urban/rural, for the school years 2007-08 (before...

This paper surveys the application of efficiency and productivity analysis to recent regulatory experience, especially in Europe. From a review of regulatory case studies, particularly of network industries, it is clear that regulatory practice differs from theoretical precedent in choice of...