infonet-economy

We propose to use neural networks to value options when analytical solutions do not exist. The basic idea of this approach is to approximate the value function of a dynamic program by a neural net, where the selection of the network weights is done via simulated annealing. The main benefits of this method as compared to traditional approximation techniques are that there are no...

In Austria, the social democrats suffered major electoral losses in the 1980s and the first half of the 1990s, and these losses translated primarily into gains for right-wing populism. In Sweden, by contrast, the social democrats have pretty much held their own in recent elections (except for 1991) and protest voting has assumed leftist as well as rightist forms. Commonly regarded as...

Research on social movements has usually addressed issues of movement emergence and mobilization, yet has paid less attention to their outcomes and consequences. Although there exists a considerable amount of work on this aspect, little systematic research has been done so far. Most existing work focuses on political and policy outcomes of movements, whereas few studies address their...

This paper analyzes the new World Trade Organization (WTO) dispute settlement system as a dynamic game under uncertainty, and explores its strategic elements and incentive structure. Our model delivers a number of implications, confirmed by already settled cases: Governments are often tempted to introduce trade restrictions which can guar- antee a positive payoff for a certain period...

Lorenz curves and associated tools for ranking income distributions are commonly estimated on the assumption that full, unbiased samples are available. However it is common to ¯nd income and wealth distributions that are routinely censored or trimmed. We derive the sampling distribution for a key family of statistics in the case where data have been modified in this fashion.