In this paper we use Monte Carlo sampling experiments to examine the properties of pretest estimators in the random parameters logit (RPL) model. The pretests are for the presence of random parameters. We study the Lagrange multiplier (LM), likelihood ratio (LR), and Wald tests, using...

Taxation is the commonest and oldest source of government revenue in the world. The main reason for taxation is to finance government expenses and redistribute of wealth. The shadow economy and tax evasion are both widespread in Zimbabwe. When the taxation system is not effective, many economic...

In this paper, I develop the leading indicators of the business cycle turning points exploiting the quarterly panel dataset comprising OECD countries and Russia over the 1980-2013 period. Contrasting to the previous studies, I combine data on OECD countries and Russia into a single dataset and...

Current research practices include estimation of latent class logits on data collected with discrete choice experiments. This practice relies on a mismatch in the characterization of heterogeneity in preferences: while discrete choice experiments usually assume homogeneity, latent class logits...

Variational Bayesian methods aim to address some of the weaknesses (computation time, storage costs and convergence monitoring) of mainstream MCMCbased inference at the cost of a biased approximation to the posterior distribution. We investigate the performance of variational approximations in...

This paper investigates leading indicators of systemic banking crises in a panel of 11 EU countries, with a particular focus on Finland. We use quarterly data from 1980Q1 to 2013Q2, in order to create a large number of macro-financial indicators, as well as their various transformations. We make...

The role of assortment planning and pricing in shaping sales and profits of retailers is well documented and studied in monopolistic settings. However, such a role remains relatively unexplored in competitive environments. In this paper, we study equilibrium behavior of competing retailers in...

This study identifies the factors affecting the ratings assigned to Canadian firms by the rating agency Standard and Poor's, and proposes a multinomial logit model to predict ratings. We first propose a two-class model which classifies ratings as either investment or speculative grade. We then...

This paper investigates leading indicators of systemic banking crises in a panel of 11 EU countries, with a particular focus on Finland. We use quarterly data from 1980Q1 to 2013Q2, in order to create a large number of macro-financial indicators, as well as their various transformations. We make...