Scholars frequently use ex post evaluation metrics such as the Mean Absolute Percentage Error (MAPE) to estimate forecast accuracy. However, ante are essential know whether a given forecasting model is suitable for variable irrespective of outcome evaluations. The measures help us ensure that accurate, not by chance. current study presents Posterior Variance Test (PVT), which can serve an measu...

The paper studies bilateral contracting with endogenous property rights. Players engage in costly ex post adjustment of ex ante contract. After ex ante agreement on surplus sharing, players invest irreversibly production. Player costs of altering ex ante contract are transaction costs of three kinds: measurement, information and enforcement costs. Each player chooses an action which incurs tran...

Manufacturing is the locus of U.S. innovation, accounting for more than three quarters of U.S. corporate patents. The rise of import competition from China has represented a major competitive shock to the sector, which in theory could benefit or stifle innovation. In this paper we empirically examine how rising import competition from China has affected U.S. innovation. We confront two empirica...

are saved, which would not have been, had no ante-natal care been bestowed on the pregnant mother. Assuredly this is of the greatest importance, not only personally for the patient and her child but also socially for the country, which is being faced at present with a declining birth-rate, and thus everything possible should be done to aid the pregnant woman and her unborn child. This has not o...

In the past few years, there has been an increasing interest in developing project control systems. The primary purpose of such systems is to indicate whether the actual performance is consistent with the baseline and to produce a signal in the case of non-compliance. Recently, researchers have shown an increased interest in monitoring project’s performance indicators, by plotting them on the S...

I study school assignment problems, focusing on two popular mechanisms: the Boston Mechanism (BM) and Deferred Acceptance (DA). The former has been criticized regarding both e¢ ciency and fairness, particularly its treatment of naïve (non-strategic) students. The latter has been suggested in its place, and has already replaced the former in several cities. The formal critique of BM and support ...

In World War II, the Soviet mobilisation of industry appears to have been more successful than the German. Yet in terms of prewar resources and ex ante mobilisation potential there is no obvious reason why this should have been the case. In production, resources, and mobilisation preparations there were many similarities. The obvious differences were mostly to the Soviet disadvantage. Yet the S...

We study Pareto improvements whose implementation requires knowledge of only market prices and traded quantities, not utility and demand functions. Quantity stabilizations (for example, the Lau, Qian, and Roland model of dual-track reform) give agents the right to repeat their earlier trades and hence require policymakers to know the quantities agents previously exchanged. While reasonable in s...

Rai¤a (1961) has suggested that ambiguity aversion will cause a strict preference for randomization. We show, however, that dynamic consistency implies that individuals will be indi¤erent to ex ante randomizations. On the other hand, it is possible for a dynamically-consistent ambiguity averse preference relation to exhibit a strict preference for some ex post randomizations. We argue that our ...