In resolution of international contract disputes, arbitrators may sometimes show greater fidelity than courts to the parties' intentions and established rule of a chosen law, foregoing any policy-making function similar to that sometimes asserted by common law judges. In adjusting international...

Inflation is one of key policy variables in the European Union. Keeping inflation below 2 percent is the main proclaimed goal of the European Central Bank. Monitoring inflation dynamics is even more important for the EU candidate countries, as it forms a crucial part of the so called Maastricht...

The paper examines whether the Arab Spring phenomenon was predictable by complete elimination in the dispersion of core demands for better governance, more jobs and stable consumer prices. A methodological innovation of the Generalized Methods of Moments is employed to assess the feasibility and...

We model core demands for better governance (political, economic and institutional), more employment and less consumer price inflation using a methodological innovation on the complete elimination of cross-country differences in signals susceptible of sparking social revolts. The empirical...

This paper proposes a rating methodology that is based on a non-linear classification method, the support vector machine, and a non-parametric technique for mapping rating scores into probabilities of default. We give an introduction to underlying statistical models and represent the results of...

In many economic applications it is desirable to make future predictions about the financial status of a company. The focus of predictions is mainly if a company will default or not. A support vector machine (SVM) is one learning method which uses historical data to establish a classification...

This paper proposes a rating methodology that is based on a non-linear classification method, the support vector machine, and a non-parametric technique for mapping rating scores into probabilities of default. We give an introduction to underlying statistical models and represent the results of...

We consider 1927 borrowers from 54 countries who had a credit rating by both Moody's and S&P as of the end of 1998, and their subsequent default history up to the end of 2002. Viewing bond ratings as predicted probabilities of default, we show that it is unlikely that both agencies are well...