This book is part of the proceedings of The International Conference on Recent Developments in Statistics, Econometrics and Forecasting 2010, which was organized to provide opportunities for academics and researchers to share their knowledge on recent developments in this area. The conference featured the most up-to-date research results and applications in statistics, econometrics and forecasting. The book has fifteen chapters contributed by different authors and can be divided into five parts: Time Series and Econometric Modelling, Linear Models, Non-parametrics, Statistical Applications and Statistical Methodology. This book will be helpful to graduate students, researchers and applied statisticians working in the area of time series, statistical and econometric modelling.

This dissertation will discuss the uncertainty encountered in the daily operations of businesses. The concepts will be developed by first giving an overview of probability and statistics as used in our everyday activities, such as the basic principles of probability, univariate and multivariate statistics, data clustering and mapping, as well as time sequence and spectral analysis. The examples used will be from the oil and gas exploration industry because the risks taken in this industry are normally quite large and are ideal for showing the application of the various techniques for minimizing risk. Subsequently, the discussion will deal with basic risk analysis, spatial and time variations of risk, geotechnical risk analysis, risk aversion and how it is affected by personal biases, an...

Computational Finance, an exciting new cross-disciplinary research area, depends extensively on the tools and techniques of computer science, statistics, information systems and financial economics for educating the next generation of financial researchers, analysts, risk managers, and financial information technology professionals. This new discipline, sometimes also referred to as “Financial Engineering” or “Quantitative Finance” needs professionals with extensive skills both in finance and mathematics along with specialization in computer science. Soft-Computing in Capital Market hopes to fulfill the need of applications of this offshoot of the technology by providing a diverse collection of cross-disciplinary research. This edited volume covers most of the recent, advanced r...

The study of Multivariate Time Series has always been more difficult at the modeling stage than the univariate case. Identification of a suitable model, questions of stability, and the difficulties of prediction are well recognised. A variety of methods appear to be worth examining. This thesis is concerned with the proposal of an useful tool which is to apply canonical analysis to a realisation of a Multivariate Time Series and concentrates it's attention on k-variate ARMA(p,q) models. The multivariate series is partitioned into two overlapping or non-overlapping sets of different sizes. The left set is kept at lag 0 (without loss of generality) and the right set at a sequence of lags s=0,1,... . The model includes the possibility that the same subset of variables belong to the left set a...

This study attempts to examine the impact of a trade decontrol policy on food output within the Nigerian macroeconomic context. In other words, the study relates trade liberalization to the national food security situation between 1970 and 2000, by employing descriptive statistics and error correction model (ECM) as the research methodologies. Regional and multilateral trade agreements seem to reduce barriers to the flow of commodities across borders, thus fostering a more efficient allocation of scarce resources as well as raising gross output with positive implications for food security at various levels. Though the trend analyses revealed considerable fluctuations, there existed greater improvements during the trade decontrol era than during the period of trade restriction. The produc...

Job satisfaction is one of the most researched topics in the field of industrial psychology. This dissertation is an examination of job satisfaction of international educators in the post-September 11th era. International educators have experienced immense change since September 11, including implementation of the Student Exchange Visitor Information System (SEVIS) and the threat of global terrorism. As a result many international educators are contemplating early retirement or are leaving the field for different vocations. This study focuses on four different international educator groups: English as a second language administrators/ teachers, international student advisors, study abroad/ international program advisors, and international admissions advisors. The study is the first compreh...

Amidst the dramatic real estate fluctuations in the first decade of the twenty-first century, this study recognized that there is a necessity to create a real estate prediction model for future real estate ventures and prevention of losses such as the mortgage meltdown and housing bust. This real estate prediction model study sought to reinstall the integrity into the American building and development industry, which was tarnished by the sudden emergence of various publications offering get-rich-quick schemes. In the fast-paced and competitive world of lending and real estate development, it is becoming more complex to combine current and evolving factors into a profitable business model. This prediction model correlated past real estate cycle pinpoints to economical driving forces in o...

This book reveals and discusses existing and potential problems derived from the transport economics domain in relation to their environment, and the social, political and economic impacts, with reference to a wide range of transport modes. It is suitable not only for academics or students, but also for people working in the transport industry. From this book, readers will learn how to apply economic principles to transport, drawing specifically upon a number of case studies of different areas of Great Britain. This book is particularly useful for those who are interested in the subject of transport economics, but may not have studied economics, statistics or mathematics. REVIEWS A useful collection of concepts on transport economics for all of us that work in the transport field, and ar...

(Complete work in Spanish) Remote sensing aerial spectral imaging was one of the first application areas where spectral imaging was used in order to identify and monitor the natural resources and covers on earth surface. Aerial spectral imaging is being developed with the aim of monitoring natural resources like coastal areas, forestry and extensive crops. The information contained in hyperspectral images allows the reconstruction of the energy curve radiated by the terrestrial surface throughout the electromagnetic spectrum. Hence, the characterization, identification and classification of the observed material from their spectral curve is an interesting possibility. Pattern recognition methods have proven to be effective techniques in this kind of applications. In fact, classification of...

The purpose of this study was to identify the factors associated with the utilization of preadjudicatory detention among juveniles in the United States. Specifically, this study identified: (a) the philosophical basis associated with the utilization of the preadjudicatory detention of juveniles, (b) the legal origins of the preadjudicatory detention of juveniles, (c) a number of theoretical perspectives associated with the use of preadjudicatory detention of juveniles, and (d) whether legal (i.e., prior record, offense, etc.) or extralegal factors (i.e., race, gender, etc.) were associated with the detention of juveniles in the juvenile justice system. The study utilized a quantitative method design in which secondary data were employed. A total of 7,135 juveniles were analyzed from sec...

Computer Aided State Estimation of Electric Power Networks is a fundamental introduction to the topic of state estimation at an advanced textbook level for teaching a course at either the graduate or undergraduate level, as well as for Post Graduate students and Research Scholars who want to review of the latest techniques and best mathematical approaches for estimating the state of a general system. Theory as well as practice of Distribution System State Estimation (DSSE) is covered with imperative rigidity. The authors present the theory of state estimation clearly providing the right amount of essential information and linked reports in order to enable the researchers and graduate students to apply state estimation techniques across a variety of fields in power systems engineering. A pr...

When African scholars lament over the near destruction of African cultures, they do not reflect the reality of African women's historical traditions of empowerment and inclusion in pre-colonial/pre-Christian African societies, which were also lost in the same process of Western Christian cultural imperialism. Similarly, most male Church theologians writing or speaking about inculturation do not address the deeper cultural issues, which impact heavily on African women. As Nigerian theologian, Rose Mary Edet rightly observed, "policy-related and other research projects concerned with "women in development" often uncover cultural factors without associating them with religious beliefs and myths that rule women's lives" (in Life, women and culture, 1991, Introduction). Yet, these deeper cultur...

Does the field of evolution differ from other sciences? The author, a reviewer for a major medical journal, scrutinized hundreds of scientific references in evolutionary literature, adopting the same standards used for studies submitted for medical publication. The data show that there are two types of evolution, microevolution and macroevolution, with a clear boundary between them based upon the presence and absence of empirical evidence, respectively. The surprising results show that there is a universal disconnect between the data and the conclusions that claim to show the larger changes of macroevolution. The author reveals patterns of deviations from standard scientific methods in these studies. For the first time, evolutionary data have been summarized to describe both what evolution...

The efficiency of a probabilistic hydrological forecasting system with weather radar and the Probability distributed hydrological model (PDM) was evaluated at the Brue catchment; south-western England. The ability of the radar to measure gauged precipitation in 2007 (regarded as the ground truth) was evaluated using Normalized Bias (NB) and Normalized Error (NE) statistics as the objective function of evaluation. The radar overestimated precipitation measurements by average gauges with NB value of 0.41 and a considerably low NE of 0.68. Furthermore, the effectiveness of a Deterministic nowcasting system (DNS) to forecast radar measured precipitation at 132 forecast time series of 6hrs forecast lead time was assessed. The DNS overestimated the radar measured precipitation with a NB value o...

This book provides a comprehensive overview of the fundamental concepts and function of transport, as well as covering a wide array of themes, including different modes of both passenger and freight transport, primarily using various case studies from Great Britain, accompanied by short narratives/stories. It is suitable not only for academics and students, but also for people working in the transport industry. This book is particularly useful for those who are interested in the broad subject of transport in general, within the field of social sciences, but may not have studied engineering, economics, statistics or mathematics.

Remuneration may be viewed as more than merely a cost in doing business. It may be used as a motivational tool to help achieve a multitude of strategic goals. Within the global context, effective use of this tool requires addressing not only motivational factors but also cultural factors. In this thesis, factors are considered within a multinational corporate framework and within a Cultural Remuneration Model. The model defines corporate culture, professional culture, national culture and individual characteristics as factors influencing employee values associated with remuneration preferences. The theoretical development of the model required a statistically significant multinational sample. To achieve this, data was collected in 17 countries from one multinational corporation withi...

The purpose of business is to employ capital factors in such a manner as to generate value for its customers and profits for its owners. To achieve these ends, management must make at least three distinct decisions – the operating, investment, and financing decisions. The purpose of this study is to formulate a modeling methodology that harmonically analyzes and explains how the investment decision and capital elasticity influence competitive advantage. The research explores the descriptive literature for the current states of computational modeling, accounting theory and practice, managerial finance, macroeconomics, capital theory, and harmonic analysis in order to provide evidence supporting the content validity of a proposed modeling framework, which encodes, m...

Where banking is going in the future? What do banks want to see from the regulators of their particular niche of the banking industry? What do they expect customers to want from the new and exciting delivery channels that are coming into being? What major trends are going to matter during the next five and ten years? How do institutions see their own financial future?; These are main probing questions that we have been asking ourselves during the course of the research. The presentation of this work is organised to give the reader flexible means of understanding the major trends of the Global banking development. The material is largely non-technical--it is the ideas and concepts that are challenging, not the statistics.One of the unique features of this work is that it is based on the ide...

The transition from locally-produced, whole foods to distant-produced, fractioned foods marks food consumption patterns in the United States and other developed nations. Chief risk factors for prostate cancer - milk, meat and vegetable oils – were examined to determine how modern processing of these foods has impacted the incidence of prostate cancer. Food consumption patterns in six nations with consistently low prostate cancer mortality were compared with seven nations with consistently high cancer mortality. Several of the low prostate cancer mortality nations included in this study have primitive food processing technology while all the high prostate cancer mortality nations have advanced refining and food fractionating technology. World Health Organization (WHO) mortality da...

Facilitating the transition of elderly patients from the hospital setting to their pre-hospital environment is a major challenge for health care providers. Adequate discharge planning has been mandated by the Joint Commission on Accreditation of Health Care Organization (JCAHO) and the American Hospital Association (AHA). However, reports from the literature indicate that some elderly patients on Medicare may be discharged "quicker and sicker" than in the past and that care-giving family members are often not included in the discharge planning process.The problem is that elderly patients may be discharged from the hospital before appropriate discharge planning is complete. The purpose of this pilot study was to determine elderly patients' and their family members' level of satisfaction ...

One of the primary concerns in a small business is the problem of risk. Many who begin the start-up process terminate it in less than one year. Of those that survive, many are unable to achieve sustained growth and profits. Small-to-medium business enterprises (SME) have a 50% to 90% chance of failure within the first five years. While there are measures of personal risk behavior of entrepreneurs, the literature contains no measure of risk orientation for the enterprise. The purpose of this study was to develop and validate a researcher-designed instrument to measure the critical forces of business risk. The 37-item Entrepreneurial Risk Assessment Scale (ERAS) was developed from key theoretical concepts grounded in economics, marketing, management, finance, and entrepreneurship literatu...