We study an overlapping generations model of human capital accumulation with threshold effects using regional data for West Germany. Our basic goal is to shed light on what makes German regions grow. The paper finds that the relative income distribution appears to be stratifying into a trimodal distribution. Thus, application of the threshold model to a real world case, here West Germany, shows...

This paper examines the hypothesis that both stock returns and volatility are asymmetrical functions of past information from the US market. By employing a double-threshold GARCH model to investigate six major index-return series, we find strong evidence supporting the asymmetrical hypothesis of stock returns. Specifically, negative news from the US market will cause a larger decline in a natio...

In the context of the two-stage threshold model of decision making, with the agent’s choices determined by the interaction of three “structural variables,” we study the restrictions on behavior that arise when one or more variables are exogenously known. Our results supply necessary and sufficient conditions for consistency with the model for all possible states of partial knowledge, and for bo...

The Duke Community Standard was upheld in the completion of this assignment. 2 Acknowledgements I wish to thank Professor Christopher Timmins for his extensive knowledge, support and advice throughout the creation of this paper. I am also especially grateful to Lala Xun Ma for her never-ending patience, encouragement and Stata expertise. I would finally like to thank Professor Michelle Connolly...

This paper discusses recent research on methods for estimating configuration parameters for the Matrix Comparator used for linking unstandardized or heterogeneously standardized references. The matrix comparator computes the aggregate similarity between the tokens (words) in a pair of references. The two most critical parameters for the matrix comparator for obtaining the best linking results a...

This paper investigates the non-linear effects produced by main determinants of sovereign ratings issued Moody’s agency. Using a sample 29 countries observed over 2000–2019 period, we identify factors leading country to be classified, respectively, in speculative, moderately and highly speculative grades. The fixed effect logit estimates reveal that independent variables on are largely differen...

A rock failure criterion is very important for prediction of the ultimate strength in rock mechanics and geotechnics; it is determined for rock mechanics studies in mining, civil, and oil wellborn drilling operations. Also shales are among the most difficult to treat formations. Therefore, in this research work, using the artificial neural network (ANN), a model was built to predict the ultimat...

we introduce a model for prediction the behavior of electrodes which modified withcarbon nanotubes in a polymer medium. these kinds of polymer composites aredeveloped in recent years, and experimental data for its percolation threshold isavailable. we construct a model based on percolation theory and fractal dimensionsand using experimental percolation threshold for calculating the moments of c...