This paper suggests a class of stochastic collective learning processes exhibiting very irregular behavior. In particular, there are multimodal long run distributions. Some of these modes may vanish as the population size increases. This may be thought of as "bubbles" persistent for a finite...

This paper explores the possibility of evaluating the adequacy of Markov-switching time series models by comparing selected functionals (such as the spectral density function and moving empirical moments) obtained from the data with those of the fitted model using a bootstrap algorithm. The...

This paper analyzes the dynamics of the distributions of per capita Gross Domestic Product (GDP), the infant mortality rate, and the adult literacy rate across states in Mexico between 1994 and 2000. It analyzes the hypothesis of convergence to a common l

The type function of an agent, in a type space, associates with each state a probability distribution on the type space. Thus, a type function can be considered as a Markov chain on the state space. A common prior for the space turns out to be a probability distribution which is invariant under...

Service life appraisal is an important facet of the management of the NHS estate portfolio. Existing approaches to remaining service life estimation use simple deterministic methods, which could yield inaccurate results. An alternative approach to forecasting the remaining life of hospital...

A generalised cross entropy instrumental variables estimator is used to recover the non-stationary transition probability matrix for the Danish pork industry. A technique is also developed to recover missing data points due to category re-specifications. The impact of a set of exogenous...

The empirical relationship between money and output is one of the most studied issues in macroeconomics, and a large literature has examined the causal links between monetary variables and output. One puzzle from this literature is that the results of causality tests appear to be sensitive with...

We try to establish which is the structure that best defines the venezuelan foreign exchange market. Asking ourselves whether there exist a group of agents able to exert market power. We assume that the flow of currency between banks follows a first order stochastic Markov process of first...