A fast algorithm for computing the non-parametric maximum likelihood estimate of a mixing distribution is presented. At each iteration, the algorithm adds new important points to the support set as guided by the gradient function, updates all mixing proportions via a quadratically convergent...

When speculation causes share prices to fluctuate, even the best speculators may do 'hardly better than the comprehensive common-stock averages' (Samuelson). We further demonstrate in this paper that non-speculators can indeed benefit, in terms of both utility and wealth, from speculative price...

Purpose – The last decade witnessed the reform of China's financial sector, during which Chinese commercial banks’ ownership and operation had been significantly changed in order to improve efficiency. The purpose of this paper is to investigates whether these banks have improved their...

Although previous studies of consumer choice have found that common features of alternatives are cancelled and that choices are based only on unique features, a recent study has suggested that common features are canceled only when they are irrelevant in regard to all unique features. The...

In the literature of reliability engineering, reliability of the weighted k-out-of-n system can be calculated using component reliability based on the structure function. The calculation usually assumes that the true component reliability is completely known. However, this is not the case in...

Bank Holding Companies (BHCs) have been diversifying their businesses increasingly among banking, securities and insurance activities in the recent decades through establishment of Section 20 subsidiaries in earlier years and through formation of financial holding companies after the...

A growth model with multiple industries is developed to study how industries evolve as capital accumulates endogenously when each industry exhibits Marshallian externality (increasing returns to scale) and to explain why industrial policies sometimes succeed but sometimes fail. The authors show...

A political economy model is developed to explain why two developing economies with the same economic fundamentals can have different de facto economic policies toward FDI (viewed as foreign better technology) and, as a result, receive starkly different amount of FDI inflows. I show how fiscal...