infonet-economy

Allocating people into social programmes on the basis of statistical tools has gained increasing acceptance in recent years. The need for better targeting of active labour market programmes recently has arisen in Switzerland, too. Statistically assisted programme allocation could be an effective tool to increase the effectiveness of labour market policies. It is a software tool that...

Successful estimation of the Pareto tail index from extreme order statistics relies heavily on the procedure used to determine the number of extreme order statistics that are used for the estimation. Most of the known procedures are based on the minimization of (an estimate of) the asymptotic mean square error of the Hill estimator for the Pareto tail index. The principal drawback of...

Mixed linear models are used to analyse data in many settings. These models have in most cases a multivariate normal formulation. The maximum likelihood estimator (MLE) or the residual MLE (REML) are usually chosen to estimate the parameters. However, the latter are based on the strong assumption of exact multivariate normality. Welsh and Richardson (1997) have shown that these...

This paper investigates model risk issues in the context of mean-variance portfolio selection. We analytically and numerically show that, under model misspecification, the use of statistically robust estimates instead of the widely used classical sample mean and covariance is highly beneficial for the stability properties of the mean-variance optimal portfolios. Moreover, we perform...

Information provided on applicants' resumes provides a convenient, cost-effective means for applicant screening. We sought to determine if recruiters' assessments of the presence of certain types of information on job applicants' resumes was related to applicants' general mental ability and personality traits. Forty recruiters from 35 organizations assessed the...

The paper studies the effects of tax policy on venture capital activity. Entrepreneurs pursue a single high risk project each but have no own resources. Financiers provide funds, covering investment cost plus an upfront payment, in exchange for a share in the firm. The contract must include incentives to enlist full effort of entrepreneurs. Venture capitalists also assist with...

Viele europäische Länder verwenden neben einer passiven Einkommensabsicherung der Arbeitslosen die aktive Arbeitsmarktpolitik, um deren Wiederbeschäftigung zu beschleunigen. Zunehmend setzt sich dabei die Erkenntnis durch, dass diese kostenintensive Politik dem Steuerzahler nur bei nachweisbarem Nutzen langfristig zu vermitteln ist. Auch wenn die Bereitstellung der für seriöse...