7,516 research outputs found
Mass Media As an Information Channel and Public Arena
Professor Peters argues that several functions of mass media compete and that attempts to improve risk coverage must avoid optimizing one at the expense of others
Structural Intervention Distance (SID) for Evaluating Causal Graphs
Causal inference relies on the structure of a graph, often a directed acyclic
graph (DAG). Different graphs may result in different causal inference
statements and different intervention distributions. To quantify such
differences, we propose a (pre-) distance between DAGs, the structural
intervention distance (SID). The SID is based on a graphical criterion only and
quantifies the closeness between two DAGs in terms of their corresponding
causal inference statements. It is therefore well-suited for evaluating graphs
that are used for computing interventions. Instead of DAGs it is also possible
to compare CPDAGs, completed partially directed acyclic graphs that represent
Markov equivalence classes. Since it differs significantly from the popular
Structural Hamming Distance (SHD), the SID constitutes a valuable additional
measure. We discuss properties of this distance and provide an efficient
implementation with software code available on the first author's homepage (an
R package is under construction)
Short-term borrowing for long-term projects: Are family businesses more susceptible to 'irrational' financing choices?
There are noticeable differences between the roles that various forms of credit financing play in family businesses and in other businesses. Family businesses take out more often bank loans specifically to finance investments and innovations, and they particularly often resort to the short-term and relatively expensive option of an overdraft. How can we explain these differences in financing choices? Do family businesses tend to use shorter-term, more expensive sources of financing because they face more restrictions than other or are there other motives such as financial independence at play? Our econometric approach to these issues is to study the financing behaviour and creditworthiness. For both of these aspects, we compare family businesses with non-family-run businesses that otherwise have the same characteristics. Our results do not confirm that family businesses are faced by stronger financial constraints but they indicate that family firms are prepared to accept higher financing costs in order to preserve their financial independence. --Corporate financing,innovation,family businesses,financing restrictions
Invariant Causal Prediction for Sequential Data
We investigate the problem of inferring the causal predictors of a response
from a set of explanatory variables . Classical
ordinary least squares regression includes all predictors that reduce the
variance of . Using only the causal predictors instead leads to models that
have the advantage of remaining invariant under interventions, loosely speaking
they lead to invariance across different "environments" or "heterogeneity
patterns". More precisely, the conditional distribution of given its causal
predictors remains invariant for all observations. Recent work exploits such a
stability to infer causal relations from data with different but known
environments. We show that even without having knowledge of the environments or
heterogeneity pattern, inferring causal relations is possible for time-ordered
(or any other type of sequentially ordered) data. In particular, this allows
detecting instantaneous causal relations in multivariate linear time series
which is usually not the case for Granger causality. Besides novel methodology,
we provide statistical confidence bounds and asymptotic detection results for
inferring causal predictors, and present an application to monetary policy in
macroeconomics.Comment: 55 page
On extensions of the core and the anticore of transferable utility games
We consider several related set extensions of the core and the anticore of games with transferable utility. An efficient allocation is undominated if it cannot be improved, in a specific way, by sidepayments changing the allocation or the game. The set of all such allocations is called the undominated set, and we show that it consists of finitely many polytopes with a core-like structure. One of these polytopes is the L1-center, consisting of all efficient allocations that minimize the sum of the absolute values of the excesses. The excess Pareto optimal set contains the allocations that are Pareto optimal in the set obtained by ordering the sums of the absolute values of the excesses of coalitions and the absolute values of the excesses of their complements. The L1-center is contained in the excess Pareto optimal set, which in turn is contained in the undominated set. For three-person games all these sets coincide. These three sets also coincide with the core for balanced games and with the anticore for antibalanced games. We study properties of these sets and provide characterizations in terms of balanced collections of coalitions. We also propose a single-valued selection from the excess Pareto optimal set, the min-prenucleolus, which is defined as the prenucleolus of the minimum of a game and its dual.Transferable utility game; core; anticore; core extension; min-prenucleolus
A Random Utility Analysis of Southern Alberta Sportfishing
Resource /Energy Economics and Policy,
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