Abstract In this paper, income per capita convergence hypothesis is tested in selected OIC countries. For this purpose, we use the time series model and univariate KPSS stationary test with multiple structural breaks (Carrion-i-Silvestre et al. (2005)) over the period 1950-2008. The results show that most OIC countries could not catch up toward USA. Although because of some positive term of tra...

Traditional psychometric approaches towards assessment tend to focus exclusively on quantitative properties of assessment outcomes. This may limit more meaningful educational approaches towards workplace-based assessment (WBA). Cognition-based models of WBA argue that assessment outcomes are determined by cognitive processes by raters which are very similar to reasoning, judgment and decision m...

Timber prices belong to the most important variables affecting the optimality of forest management. On the other hand, forecasting of timber prices is very uncertain. One difficulty when using past time series data in forecasting future timber price development is the possibility of changes in the markets and in the society at large. Expert knowledge can be applied in forecasting of timber pric...

Macroeconomic forecasts are used extensively in industry and government The historical accuracy of US and UK forecasts are examined in the light of different approaches to evaluating macro forecasts. Issues discussed include the comparative accuracy of macroeconometric models compared to their time series alternatives, whether the forecasting record has improved over time, the rationality of ma...

When attempting to predict future events, people commonly rely on historical data. One psychological characteristic of judgmental forecasting of time series, established by research, is that when people make forecasts from series, they tend to underestimate future values for upward trends and overestimate them for downward ones, so-called trend-damping (modeled by anchoring on, and insufficient...

Wall displacements and ground pressure acting on the lining of a tunnel increase with time. These time-dependent deformations are both due to face advance effect and to the time-dependent behavior of the rock mass.  Viscoelastic materials exhibit both viscous and elastic behaviors. Thorough this study, the effect of different linear viscoelastic models including Maxwell, Kelvin and Kelvin-Voigt...

Judgment aggregation is a recent formal discipline thatstudies how to aggregate individual judgments to formcollective decisions. Examples are expert panels, legalcourts, boards, and councils. The problems investigatedin this new field are relevant and common to many situ-ations. Nevertheless, the existing procedures are ideal-ized and, as for the related problems of pre...

Three recent papers have examined the effect of a national tightening of firearm legislation and gun buy-back in Australia in 1996-1997 on firearm and non-firearm death rates. Despite analysing almost the same data, the three papers reach rather different conclusions. In this article, we highlight key methodological concerns with the papers. We also make some judgments as to the evidence on the...