3,009 research outputs found
Rent indices for housing in West Germany 1985 to 1998
In several studies, hedonic methods have been used successfully for the ex post assessment of the accuracy of inflation measurement. Most of those studies relate to high-tech products, with respect to which traditional methods of compiling price indices often fail. We apply hedonic methods to rental housing services, which display less quality progress. However, as German households devote about 10 % of their total expenditure to rented housing services, even a small bias in this field might induce a substantial distortion in overall inflation measurement. On the basis of data from the German Socio-Economic Panel, we perform a hedonic analysis of housing rents and compile different price indices. Overall, we conclude that there is some evidence of an understatement of rent inflation in the official rent index for West Germany at the beginning of the 1990s. -- Hedonische Methoden wurden in einer Reihe von Studien erfolgreich fĂŒr die ex post Analyse der Genauigkeit der Inflationsmessung verwendet. Die meisten dieser Studien beziehen sich auf High-tech Produkte, bei denen traditionelle Methoden zur Berechnung von Preisindizes oftmals versagen. Wir wenden hedonische Methoden auf Mieten fĂŒr Wohnungen an. Dort ist der QualitĂ€tsfortschritt weniger stark. Da aber die privaten Haushalte in Deutschland rund 10 % ihres Budgets fĂŒr Mieten ausgeben, könnte selbst eine kleine Verzerrung in diesem Bereich die Genauigkeit der Inflationsmessung insgesamt empfindlich stören. Auf Grundlage von Daten des Sozioökonomischen Panels schĂ€tzen wir hedonische Gleichungen fĂŒr Wohnungsmieten und berechnen verschiedene Indizes. Insgesamt kommen wir zu dem Ergebnis, dass es in Westdeutschland Anfang der neunziger Jahre Hinweise auf eine UnterschĂ€tzung des Mietenanstiegs durch den offiziellen Mietenindex gab.Consumer Price Index,hedonics,housing,matched models
On adaptive posterior concentration rates
We investigate the problem of deriving posterior concentration rates under
different loss functions in nonparametric Bayes. We first provide a lower bound
on posterior coverages of shrinking neighbourhoods that relates the metric or
loss under which the shrinking neighbourhood is considered, and an intrinsic
pre-metric linked to frequentist separation rates. In the Gaussian white noise
model, we construct feasible priors based on a spike and slab procedure
reminiscent of wavelet thresholding that achieve adaptive rates of contraction
under or metrics when the underlying parameter belongs to a
collection of H\"{o}lder balls and that moreover achieve our lower bound. We
analyse the consequences in terms of asymptotic behaviour of posterior credible
balls as well as frequentist minimax adaptive estimation. Our results are
appended with an upper bound for the contraction rate under an arbitrary loss
in a generic regular experiment. The upper bound is attained for certain sieve
priors and enables to extend our results to density estimation.Comment: Published at http://dx.doi.org/10.1214/15-AOS1341 in the Annals of
Statistics (http://www.imstat.org/aos/) by the Institute of Mathematical
Statistics (http://www.imstat.org
Trusted computing
Die Trusted Computing Initiative ist ein Zusammenschluss mehrerer Soft- und Hardwarehersteller, die sich zum Ziel gesetzt haben, Computersysteme sicherer zu machen. Es wird allgemein angenommen, dass Hardware schwerer zu manipulieren ist als Software. Vorhandene hardwaregestĂŒtzte Sicherheitsmechanismen, wie z.B. Smartcards haben sich nicht durchsetzen können, da die Nutzung zu kompliziert und umstĂ€ndlich ist. Dies soll - mithilfe von Trusted Computing - durch die Verlagerung von Sicherheitsmechanismen in eine geschĂŒtzte Hardwareumgebung, auf möglichst vielen Systemen, erreicht werden. Neue Softwarestandards sollen darauf aufbauend, komplexe und flexible Sicherheitsdienste anbieten können
Consumer price adjustment under the microscope: Germany in a period of low inflation
We analyse the adjustment of retail and services prices in a period of low inflation, using a set of individual price data from the German Consumer Price Index that covers the years 1998 to 2003. We strong find evidence of time- and statedependent price adjustment. Most importantly, the differences in âunconditionalâ sectoral price flexibility are found to be linked to input price volatility. JEL Classification: E31, D43, L11consumer price index, Germany, price flexibility, price rigidity
Warum die Nachfrage nach ethisch-ökologischen Geldanlagen so rasant steigt : zu Chancen und Grenzen nachhaltiger Fonds
Wie uns die Finanzkrise lehrt, leben wir in einem Wirtschaftssystem, in dem das Geldkapital Vorrang hat vor allen anderen Werten wie vor Natur, Mensch, Arbeit und Gemeinwohl. Die dadurch hervorgerufenen SchÀden regen die Menschen in unserer Gesellschaft dazu an, Ideen im Interesse
einer zukunftsfĂ€higen Marktwirtschaft zu testen. Die ethisch-ökologische Geldanlage wird dafĂŒr als eine Möglichkeit angesehen
Consumer price adjustment under the microscope: Germany in a period of low inflation
We analyse the adjustment of retail and services prices in a period of low inflation, using a set of individual price data from the German Consumer Price Index which covers the years 1998 to 2003. We strong find evidence of time- and state-dependent price adjustment. Most importantly, the differences in ?unconditional? sectoral price flexibility are found to be linked to input price volatility. --price rigidity,price flexibility,Consumer Price Index,Germany
Nonparametric estimation of the volatility under microstructure noise: wavelet adaptation
We study nonparametric estimation of the volatility function of a diffusion process from discrete data, when the data are blurred by additional noise. This noise can be white or correlated, and serves as a model for microstructure effects in financial modeling, when the data are given on an intra-day scale. By developing pre-averaging techniques combined with wavelet thresholding, we construct adaptive estimators that achieve a nearly optimal rate within a large scale of smoothness constraints of Besov type. Since the underlying signal (the volatility) is genuinely random, we propose a new criterion to assess the quality of estimation; we retrieve the usual minimax theory when this approach is restricted to deterministic volatility.Adaptive estimation; diffusion processes; high-frequency data; microstructure noise; minimax estimation; semimartingales; wavelets.
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