How reliable are recession prediction models?

The U.S. economy continues to advance briskly, defying forecasts of more moderate growth. Beginning in March 1991, the current expansion has become the longest peacetime expansion on record and is less than a year away from becoming the longest in U.S. history. To the surprise of some observers, economic growth has been particularly robust late in the expansion. In fact, over the last three years growth has averaged 4 percent annually, and indicators of growth for the first half of 1999 show no signs of significant slowing.> Despite these positive signs, few analysts believe the expansion can go on forever. As the expansion continues to age, economists will increasingly be called on to predict the next recession. Recession prediction models may help them gauge the likelihood of imminent recession.> Filardo examines the reliability of five popular recession prediction models. He concludes that these models have demonstrated some ability in the past to predict recessions. When judiciously interpreted, the models can help resolve uncertainty about the possibility of future recession.Recessions ; Forecasting

Reaching out with OER: the new role of public-facing open scholar

Open educational resources (OER) and, more recently, open educational practices (OEP) have been widely promoted as a means of increasing openness in higher education (HE). Thus far, such openness has been limited by OER provision typically being supplier-driven and contained within the boundaries of HE. Seeking to explore ways in which OEP might become more needs-led we conceptualised a new ‘public-facing open scholar’ role involving academics working with online communities to source and develop OER to meet their needs. To explore the scope for this role we focused on the voluntary sector, which we felt might particularly benefit from such collaboration. We evaluated four representative communities for evidence of their being self-educating (thereby offering the potential for academics to contribute) and for any existing learning dimension. We found that all four communities were self-educating and each included learning infrastructure elements, for example provision for web chats with ‘experts’, together with evidence of receptiveness to academic collaboration. This indicated that there was scope for the role of public-facing open scholar. We therefore developed detailed guidelines for performing the role, which has the potential to be applied beyond the voluntary sector and to greatly extend the beneficial impact of existing OER, prompting institutions to release new OER in response to the needs of people outside HE

Are we talking the Same Language? Challenging Complexity in Country Brand Models

The purpose of this paper is to review recent research into country brand models and identify the most common and shared dimensions. Based on the literature review, this study establishes a conceptual framework to consider the complex interaction between the core constructs of country branding, country brand models and country image. This paper attempts to show that there is no acceptable, concrete and universally theoretical-recognised definition either in the academic literature or in the business and trade arena. The paper is divided into three parts with the first focusing on country branding constructs, branding strategies as well as the importance in the global economy and competitive arena worldwide of the country brand. The second part reviews the conceptual origin of the main country brand models in the last decades. The third part discusses the country image construct, and identifies this as the country brand reflection. The paper summary draws the analysis together to present the exploration of the country brand model dimensions. The purpose of the paper is to determine the most common dimensions in the main country brand models. The findings are that: tourism is the most supported by five models; followed by governance and investment by four models); and exports and immigration are supported by three models. Despite its exploratory nature, this study offers insight for researchers, country brand strategists and communications professionals to rethink the country brand being adopted to comprehend a country image and to invest in either public relation, promotion and advertising worldwide. The country brand models discussed in this paper may be applied to other future investigations regarding the need for a conventional and consistent country brand model, including new dimensions related to the multiple stakeholders and specific country variables

Why are learned indexes so effective?

A recent trend in algorithm design consists of augmenting classic data structures with machine learning models, which are better suited to reveal and exploit patterns and trends in the input data so to achieve outstanding practical improvements in space occupancy and time efficiency. This is especially known in the context of indexing data structures where, despite few attempts in evaluating their asymptotic efficiency, theoretical results are yet missing in showing that learned indexes are provably better than classic indexes, such as B+-trees and their variants. In this paper, we present the first mathematically-grounded answer to this open problem. We obtain this result by discovering and exploiting a link between the original problem and a mean exit time problem over a proper stochastic process which, we show, is related to the space and time occupancy of those learned indexes. Our general result is then specialised to five well-known distributions: Uniform, Lognormal, Pareto, Exponential, and Gamma; and it is corroborated in precision and robustness by a large set of experiments

Econometric Estimates of Prices Indexes for Personal Computers in the 1990s

In this paper we construct a number of quality-adjusted price indexes for personal computers in the U.S. marketplace over the 1989- 92 time period. We generalize earlier work by incorporating simultaneously the time, age and vintage effects of computer models into a fully saturated parameterization, and then develop a corresponding specification test procedure. While the simple arithmetic mean of prices of models by year reveals a price decline of about 11% per year, use of a matched model procedure similar to that commonly used by government statistical agencies generates a much larger rate of price decline -- about 20% per year. Since the matched model procedure holds quality constant, it ignores quality change embodied in new models. When data on new and surviving models are used in the estimation of hedonic price equations, a variety of quality-adjusted price indexes can be calculated, with varying interpretations. Although there are some differences, we find that on average these quality-adjusted price indexes decline at about 30% per year, with a particularly large price drop occurring in 1992. Parameters in hedonic price equations for desktop PC models differ from those for mobile PCs. Moreover, quality-adjusted prices fall at a slightly lower AAGR for mobile models (24%) than for desktops (32%). We conclude that taking quality changes into account has an enormous impact on the time pattern of price indexes for PCs.

A comparative analysis between two statistical deviation–based consensus measures in group decision making problems

The mean absolute deviation and the standard deviation, two statistical measures commonly used in quantifying variability, may become an interesting tool when defining consensus measures. Two consensus indexes which obtain the level of consensus in some problems of Group Decision Making are introduced in this paper by expanding the aforementioned statistical concepts. A comparative analysis reveals that the levels of consensus derived from these indexes are close to those obtained employing distance functions when a fuzzy preference relations frame is considered, so they turn out to be a useful tool in this context. In addition, these indexes are different from each other and with the distance functions considered. Thus, they are applicable tools in the calculation of consensus in our context and are different from those commonly used

Is there a Difference? The Performance Characteristics of SRI Equity Indexes

Investments in socially responsible investments (SRI) are still a small, but growing segment of international capital markets. This study analyses whether a SRI screening process applied to equities results in a different performance outcome compared to relevant conventional benchmark indexes. In contrast to other studies, the analysis concentrates on SRI indexes and not on investment funds. This has several advantages, which include that the transaction costs of funds, the timing activities and the skill of the fund management do not have to be considered. This leads to a relatively direct measure of the performance effects of SRI screens. The 29 SRI stock indexes are analysed by single-factor models with benchmarks that closely approximate the investment universe of the SRI stock indexes and by multi-equation systems that also exploit the information in the cross-section. The results show that SRI stock indexes do not exhibit a different risk-adjusted return than conventional benchmarks. But many SRI indexes have a higher risk relative to the benchmarks. These findings are robust to the use of different sets of benchmark indexes and apply to all common types of SRI screening. --Socially responsible investing,equity indexes,performance,risk