In this paper, we introduce a new Fourier method for computing value-at-risk for a portfolio with derivatives and for return models with fat tails. The new method does not assume that the characteristic function for the return model is known explicitly. We define a class of admissible models for...

Diversity is a key issue in the provision of critical publicly provided goods such as clean drinking water and education. To develop institutions that address this issue, it is critical that we understand the mechanisms through which diversity and public goods are related. A simple model of...

Social capital appears to have significant consequences for economic development, yet we know little about how social capital develops or the role of government institutions in promoting or hindering that development. The two key approaches to social capital, as civic engagement or as...

A basket default swap (BDS) is a credit derivative with contingent payments that are triggered by a combination of default events of the reference entities. A forward-starting basket default swap (FBDS) is a BDS starting at a specified future time. Existing analytic or semi-analytic methods for...

In this paper, we consider the following inverse problem for the first hitting time distribution: given a Wiener process with a random initial state, probability distribution, F(t), and a linear boundary, b(t)=[mu]t, find a distribution of the initial state such that the distribution of the...

Many widely used models, including proportional hazards models with un- observed heterogeneity, can be written in the form (Y ) = min[ 0 X + U; C], where is an unknown increasing function, the error term U has unknown distribution function and is independent of X, C is a random censoring...

The failure of human capital theory to explain firm related effects on wages, new empirical approaches to internal labor markets, and new work on careers have all led to a recent surge in interest in how firm internal structure, and the jobs within firms, help determine wages. The least...