Question Dependent Recurrent Entity Network for Question Answering

Question Answering is a task which requires building models capable of providing answers to questions expressed in human language. Full question answering involves some form of reasoning ability. We introduce a neural network architecture for this task, which is a form of $Memory\ Network$, that recognizes entities and their relations to answers through a focus attention mechanism. Our model is named $Question\ Dependent\ Recurrent\ Entity\ Network$ and extends $Recurrent\ Entity\ Network$ by exploiting aspects of the question during the memorization process. We validate the model on both synthetic and real datasets: the $bAbI$ question answering dataset and the $CNN\ \&\ Daily\ News$$reading\ comprehension$ dataset. In our experiments, the models achieved a State-of-The-Art in the former and competitive results in the latter.Comment: 14 page

Short-term interest rate futures as monetary policy forecasts

The prices of futures contracts on short-term interest rates are commonly used by central banks to gauge market expectations concerning monetary policy decisions. Excess returns - the difference between futures rates and the realized rates - are positive, on average, and statistically significant, both in the euro area and in the United States. We find that these biases are significantly related to the business cycle only in the United States. Moreover, the sign and the significance of the estimated relationships with business cycle indicators are unstable over time. Breaking the excess returns down into risk premium and forecast error components, we find that risk premia are counter-cyclical in both areas. On the contrary, ex-post prediction errors, which represent the greater part of excess returns at longer horizons in both areas, are correlated with the business cycle (negatively) only in the United States.futures rates, monetary policy, risk-premium

Old and new approaches to marketing. The quest of their epistemological roots

In recent years the marketing discipline faced a considerable increase in the number of approaches. Some of the new "labels" are probably just new names advertised to sell old products. But some may contain significant new issues that need to be identified and discussed. Do these new marketing denominations (viral, retro, vintage, postmodern, judo, tribal, buzz, and many more) identify distinctions on subjects being studied, without particular methodological implications, or rather, do new labels and new subjects imply orientations that start from different epistemological premises and involve different research methodologies? This paper try to investigate if the proliferation of labels related to alleged new methods of marketing analysis actually implies a distinctions of subjects being studied and different epistemological premises.marketing trends, marketing epistemology

Banking integration and co-movements in EU banks’ fragility

The aim of this paper is to verify whether and to which extent co-movements in EU banks’ risk, i.e. their degree of exposures of European banks to common shocks, have increased in time, following the completion of Monetary Union, the introduction of the euro and the process of European banking integration. To this end, we provide a measure of co-movements in bank risk by means of a dynamic factor model, which allows to decompose an indicator of bank fragility, the Distance-to-Default, into three main components: an EU-wide, a country-specific and a bank-level idiosyncratic component. Our results show the commonality in bank risk appears to have significantly increased since 1999, in particular if one concentrates on large banks. We also show that co-movements in EU banks’ fragility are only in part related to common macro shocks and that a banking system specific component at the EU-wide level appears relevant. This has obvious consequences in terms of systemic stability, but may also have far reaching policy implications with regards to the structuring of banking supervision in EuropeCo-movements; dynamic factor models; distance-to-default; Systemic risk

Measuring bank capital requirements through Dynamic Factor analysis

In this paper, using industry sector stock returns as proxies of firm asset values, we obtain bank capital requirements (through the cycle). This is achieved by Montecarlo simulation of a bank loan portfolio loss density. We depart from the Basel 2 analytical formula developed by Gordy (2003) for the computation of the economic capital by, first, allowing dynamic heterogeneity in the factor loadings, and, also, by accounting for stochastic dependent recoveries. Dynamic heterogeneity in the factor loadings is introduced by using dynamic forecast of a Dynamic Factor model fitted to a large dataset of macroeconomic credit drivers. The empirical findings show that there is a decrease in the degree of Portfolio Credit Risk, once we move from the Basel 2 analytic formula to the Dynamic Factor model specification.Dynamic Factor Model, Forecasting, Stochastic Simulation, Risk Management, Banking

In quest for a sustainable motorization: the CNG opportunity

This article aims at describing the opportunity deriving from the substitution of conventional fuels, as gasoline and diesel, with the Compressed Natural Gas (CNG), frequently indicated as methane. The use of CNG systems in vehicles cannot be considered the ultimate solution to the problem of pollution generated by road transport, but the advantages of this fuel are: a) relevant, as it concerns consumer’s expenses and ecological aspect; b) rapidly achievable, waiting for availability of new technologies capable of more relevant advantages; c) close to hand for several countries: Europe and U.S. and those where the motorization is at the take-off stage, like the BRIC countries (Brazil, Russia, India, China), and others like: Iran, Pakistan, Indonesia and so on. In fact, such countries in take-off stage on the one hand have extensive reserves of methane, and on the other hand need to cut emission urgently, specifically in areas with a high density of population. From the economic point of view CNG results a viable solution with few contraindication. The most important bottleneck is represented by a possible shortage in the distribution network. If a country is crossed by a gas pipeline this shortage could be overcome rapidly and without relevant costs. In the others the solution could be achieved either through gas carriers ships or through local production of biomethane by the exploitation of biomasses.Sustainable motorization, CNG, car industry, low emission cars

Product-line variety and innovation along product life-cycle in car market: are carmakers’ policies really effective?

This paper presents some preliminary results of a research concerning the evolution of product variety and product innovation policies of carmakers in the European market. Three market segments are taken into consideration for the period 1984-2004; data concerning model sales and product characteristics of some of the main carmakers are examined and the aspects taken into consideration refers to Product Life-Cycle (PLC), price positioning, rough measures of Product Line Width (PLW) and Product Line Innovation (PLI). The aim of the research is to describe product replacement policies and timing pursued by carmakers within each segment to evaluate the effectiveness of carmakers PLC policies through inter-brand comparison mainly based upon: a) PLC extent for each model, b) PLW variation along the life-cycle, c) PLI effectiveness. Differences in brands policies, as well as evolutionary trends of persistence or of discontinuity within the same brand are investigated, as well as the relation between PLC trend and timing in new model introduction.Car Industry, Product Policy, Car Marketing

Dynamic Factor analysis of industry sector default rates and implication for Portfolio Credit Risk Modelling

In this paper we use a reduced form model for the analysis of Portfolio Credit Risk. For this purpose, we fit a Dynamic Factor model, DF, to a large dataset of default rates proxies and macrovariables for Italy. Multi step ahead density and probability forecasts are obtained by employing both the direct and indirect method of prediction together with stochastic simulation of the DF model. We, first, find that the direct method is the best performer regarding the out of sample projection of financial distressful events. In a second stage of the analysis, we find that reduced form Portfolio Credit Risk measures obtained through DF are lower than the one corresponding to the Internal Ratings Based analytic formula suggested by Basel 2. Moreover, the direct method of forecasting gives the smallest Portfolio Credit Risk measures. Finally, when using the indirect method of forecasting, the simulation results suggest that an increase in the number of dynamic factors (for a given number of principal components) increases Portfolio Credit Risk.Dynamic Factor Model, Forecasting, Stochastic Simulation, Risk Management, Banking