Reservoir Doubts

Reductionist Doubts

According to reductionism, every complex phenomenon can and should be explained in terms of the simplest possible entities and mechanisms. The parts determine the whole. This approach has been an outstanding success in science, but this essay will point out ways in which it could nevertheless be giving us wrong ideas and holding back progress. For example, it may be impossible to understand key...

Doubts , Asymmetries , and Insurance ∗

This paper studies an insurance problem where agents doubt their forecasting models. Using Hansen-Sargent multiplier preferences, these doubts are represented as sets of probability distributions that are statistically hard to discriminate. Agents differ endogenously in two aspects their forecasting models and the extent of doubts surrounding these models. This heterogeneity gives rise to a new...

Doubts or variability?

Reinterpreting most of the market price of risk as a price of model uncertainty eradicates a link between asset prices and measures of the welfare costs of aggregate fluctuations that was proposed by Hansen et al. (1999), Tallarini (2000), and Alvarez and Jermann (2004). Prices of model uncertainty contain information about the benefits of removing model uncertainty, not the consumption fluctua...

Doubts about dementia diagnoses.

Gastritis – facts and doubts

INTRODUCTION Many clinicians consider chronic gastritis to be equivalent to Helicobacter pylori infection. However, it is known that there are numerous other causes of the condition. AIM Determination of the incidence of gastritis in patients with dyspepsia referred for diagnostic endoscopy of the upper part of the digestive tract, identification of the parts of the stomach most frequently af...