When trying to interpret estimated parameters the researcher is interested in the (relative) importance of the individual predictors. However, if the predictors are highly correlated, the interpretation of coefficients, e.g. as economic multipliersʺ, is not applicable in standard regression or...

This paper illustrates the Support Vector Method for the classification problem with two and more classes. In particular, the multi-class classification Support Vector Method of Weston and Watkins (1998) is correctly formulated as a quadratic optimization problem. Then, the method is applied to...

When comparing methods for classification, often the rating relies on their prediction accuracy alone. One reason for this is that this is the aspect that can be most easily measured. Yet, often one wants to learn more about the problem than only how to predict. The interpretation of the...

In this paper a projection pursuit method is developed which determines optimal multivariate latent factor models based on a flexible loss function. This way, the unknown model coefficients are estimated with respect to optimal predictive power. The specification of the loss function in...