20,968 research outputs found
State-Observation Sampling and the Econometrics of Learning Models
In nonlinear state-space models, sequential learning about the hidden state
can proceed by particle filtering when the density of the observation
conditional on the state is available analytically (e.g. Gordon et al., 1993).
This condition need not hold in complex environments, such as the
incomplete-information equilibrium models considered in financial economics. In
this paper, we make two contributions to the learning literature. First, we
introduce a new filtering method, the state-observation sampling (SOS) filter,
for general state-space models with intractable observation densities. Second,
we develop an indirect inference-based estimator for a large class of
incomplete-information economies. We demonstrate the good performance of these
techniques on an asset pricing model with investor learning applied to over 80
years of daily equity returns
Improving basic and translational science by accounting for litter-to-litter variation in animal models
Background: Animals from the same litter are often more alike compared with
animals from different litters. This litter-to-litter variation, or "litter
effects", can influence the results in addition to the experimental factors of
interest. Furthermore, an experimental treatment can be applied to whole
litters rather than to individual offspring. For example, in the valproic acid
(VPA) model of autism, VPA is administered to pregnant females thereby inducing
the disease phenotype in the offspring. With this type of experiment the sample
size is the number of litters and not the total number of offspring. If such
experiments are not appropriately designed and analysed, the results can be
severely biased as well as extremely underpowered.
Results: A review of the VPA literature showed that only 9% (3/34) of studies
correctly determined that the experimental unit (n) was the litter and
therefore made valid statistical inferences. In addition, litter effects
accounted for up to 61% (p <0.001) of the variation in behavioural outcomes,
which was larger than the treatment effects. In addition, few studies reported
using randomisation (12%) or blinding (18%), and none indicated that a sample
size calculation or power analysis had been conducted.
Conclusions: Litter effects are common, large, and ignoring them can make
replication of findings difficult and can contribute to the low rate of
translating preclinical in vivo studies into successful therapies. Only a
minority of studies reported using rigorous experimental methods, which is
consistent with much of the preclinical in vivo literature.Comment: http://www.biomedcentral.com/1471-2202/14/37/abstrac
A Coverage Criterion for Spaced Seeds and its Applications to Support Vector Machine String Kernels and k-Mer Distances
Spaced seeds have been recently shown to not only detect more alignments, but
also to give a more accurate measure of phylogenetic distances (Boden et al.,
2013, Horwege et al., 2014, Leimeister et al., 2014), and to provide a lower
misclassification rate when used with Support Vector Machines (SVMs) (On-odera
and Shibuya, 2013), We confirm by independent experiments these two results,
and propose in this article to use a coverage criterion (Benson and Mak, 2008,
Martin, 2013, Martin and No{\'e}, 2014), to measure the seed efficiency in both
cases in order to design better seed patterns. We show first how this coverage
criterion can be directly measured by a full automaton-based approach. We then
illustrate how this criterion performs when compared with two other criteria
frequently used, namely the single-hit and multiple-hit criteria, through
correlation coefficients with the correct classification/the true distance. At
the end, for alignment-free distances, we propose an extension by adopting the
coverage criterion, show how it performs, and indicate how it can be
efficiently computed.Comment: http://online.liebertpub.com/doi/abs/10.1089/cmb.2014.017
Inflation from Supersymmetric Quantum Cosmology
We derive a special scalar field potential using the anisotropic Bianchi type
I cosmological model from canonical quantum cosmology under determined
conditions in the evolution to anisotropic variables . In the
process, we obtain a family of potentials that has been introduced by hand in
the literature to explain cosmological data. Considering supersymmetric quantum
cosmology, this family is scanned, fixing the exponential potential as more
viable in the inflation scenario .Comment: 14 pages, latex2e, To appear in Phys. Rev.
The question of âevidenceâ in the emergence of evidence-based or evidence-aware policies in agriculture
Evidence-based or evidence-aware policy approaches are used in many different sectors (health, education, etc.). These approaches are less common in agriculture but are gradually emerging. Analysis of debates surrounding this trend sheds light on the particular nature of the difficulties faced by public decision-makers who are willing to use available scientific knowledge. After examining certain misunderstandings which arise in the international debate over evidence-based policy approaches, this paper addresses two specific issues: (i) the problems of competing evidence for using knowledge in the design of public policies and (ii) the potential role of rationalization tools in a possible "depoliticisation" of public decision-making.knowledge, agriculture, policy, evidence, Agricultural and Food Policy, B29, D8, Q01, O3,
Error bounds for some semidefinite programming approaches to polynomial minimization on the hypercube.
Transformations of agricultural extension services in the EU: Towards a lack of adequate knowledge for small-scale farms
This paper examines the consequences of the transformations of extension services for small scale farms. It presents the results of investigations embedded in regulation theory, which combine a comparative institutional analysis, statistical data processing (national agricultural census) and direct surveys. We describe the transformations in the EU and show that they make it more difficult for small farms to access extension services and to benefit from âfront officeâ support (i.e. direct advice from extensionists). Finally, we emphasize that due to the modification of the knowledge production regime, these small farms may also suffer new specific adverse effects resulting from the re-organization of the "back-office" R&D activities of these extension services (i.e. knowledge base updating, database building, scientific experiments, etc.).Agricultural extension services, Small-scale farms, Institutional Analysis, Europe, Knowledge, Research and Development/Tech Change/Emerging Technologies, Q16, Q12, B52, P51, D83,
Gauge Group TQFT and Improved Perturbative Yang-Mills Theory
We reinterpret the Faddeev-Popov gauge-fixing procedure of Yang-Mills
theories as the definition of a topological quantum field theory for gauge
group elements depending on a background connection. This has the advantage of
relating topological gauge-fixing ambiguities to the global breaking of a
supersymmetry. The global zero modes of the Faddeev-Popov ghosts are handled in
the context of an equivariant cohomology without breaking translational
invariance. The gauge-fixing involves constant fields which play the role of
moduli and modify the behavior of Green functions at subasymptotic scales. At
the one loop level physical implications from these power corrections are gauge
invariant.Comment: 28 pages, uuencoded and compressed tar-file, LATEX+4 PS-figures, uses
psfig.sty. New appendix and some clarifying modifications, references adde
Idiosyncratic Production Risk, Growth and the Business Cycle
We introduce a neoclassical growth economy with idiosyncratic production risk and incomplete markets. The general equilibrium is characterized in closed form. Uninsurable production shocks introduce a risk premium on private equity and typically result in a lower steady-state level of capital than under complete markets. In the presence of such risks, the anticipation of low investment and high interest rates in the future discourages risk-taking and feeds back into low investment in the present. An endogenous macroeconomic complementarity thus arises, which slows down convergence and amplifies the magnitude and persistence of the business cycle. These results ĂąâŹâ contrasting sharply with those of Aiyagari (1994) and Krusell and Smith (1998) ĂąâŹâ highlight that idiosyncratic production or capital-income risk can have significant adverse eĂŻÂŹâŹects on capital accumulation and aggregate volatility. Keywords: Capital income, Entrepreneurial risk, Fluctuations, Growth, Investment, Precautionary savings.
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