Many historical processes exhibit recurrent patterns of change. Century-long periods of population expansion come before long periods of stagnation and decline; the dynamics of prices mirror ...population oscillations; and states go through strong expansionist phases followed by periods of state failure, endemic sociopolitical instability, and territorial loss. Peter Turchin and Sergey Nefedov explore the dynamics and causal connections between such demographic, economic, and political variables in agrarian societies and offer detailed explanations for these long-term oscillations--what the authors call secular cycles.
Mathematical modeling is critical to our understanding of how infectious diseases spread at the individual and population levels. This book gives readers the necessary skills to correctly formulate ...and analyze mathematical models in infectious disease epidemiology, and is the first treatment of the subject to integrate deterministic and stochastic models and methods.
Mathematical Tools for Understanding Infectious Disease Dynamicsfully explains how to translate biological assumptions into mathematics to construct useful and consistent models, and how to use the biological interpretation and mathematical reasoning to analyze these models. It shows how to relate models to data through statistical inference, and how to gain important insights into infectious disease dynamics by translating mathematical results back to biology. This comprehensive and accessible book also features numerous detailed exercises throughout; full elaborations to all exercises are provided.
Covers the latest research in mathematical modeling of infectious disease epidemiologyIntegrates deterministic and stochastic approachesTeaches skills in model construction, analysis, inference, and interpretationFeatures numerous exercises and their detailed elaborationsMotivated by real-world applications throughout
We consider interpretation of estimates from the heterogeneous coefficient spatial autoregressive panel model of Aquaro et al. (2015) and derive partial derivatives (marginal effects) for this model, ...an issue not discussed in Aquaro et al. (2015). We show how these differ from a conventional spatial autoregressive panel model.
•Partial derivatives for heterogeneous coefficient SAR models are derived.•Scalar summary measures proposed in the literature are not likely to work here.•Observation-level marginal effects are proposed.•Non-linear relationships between estimates and observation-level marginal effects arise as in probit.•Spatial spill-out and spill-in effects can be quantified.
Program evaluation methods are widely applied in economics to assess the effects of policy interventions and other treatments of interest. In this article, we describe the main methodological ...frameworks of the econometrics of program evaluation. In the process, we delineate some of the directions along which this literature is expanding, discuss recent developments, and highlight specific areas where new research may be particularly fruitful.
This study develops a methodology of inference for a widely used Cliff–Ord type spatial model containing spatial lags in the dependent variable, exogenous variables, and the disturbance terms, while ...allowing for unknown heteroskedasticity in the innovations. We first generalize the GMM estimator suggested in
Kelejian and Prucha (1998, 1999) for the spatial autoregressive parameter in the disturbance process. We also define IV estimators for the regression parameters of the model and give results concerning the joint asymptotic distribution of those estimators and the GMM estimator. Much of the theory is kept general to cover a wide range of settings.
Since Quetelet's work in the nineteenth century, social science has iconified the average man, that hypothetical man without qualities who is comfortable with his head in the oven and his feet in a ...bucket of ice. Conventional statistical methods since Quetelet have sought to estimate the effects of policy treatments for this average man. However, such effects are often quite heterogeneous: Medical treatments may improve life expectancy but also impose serious short-term risks; reducing class sizes may improve the performance of good students but not help weaker ones, or vice versa. Quantile regression methods can help to explore these heterogeneous effects. Some recent developments in quantile regression methods are surveyed in this review.
The Physics of Foraging Viswanathan, Gandhimohan. M.; da Luz, Marcos G. E.; Raposo, Ernesto P. ...
06/2011
eBook, Book
Do the movements of animals, including humans, follow patterns that can be described quantitatively by simple laws of motion? If so, then why? These questions have attracted the attention of ...scientists in many disciplines, and stimulated debates ranging from ecological matters to queries such as 'how can there be free will if one follows a law of motion?' This is the first book on this rapidly evolving subject, introducing random searches and foraging in a way that can be understood by readers without a previous background on the subject. It reviews theory as well as experiment, addresses open problems and perspectives, and discusses applications ranging from the colonization of Madagascar by Austronesians to the diffusion of genetically modified crops. The book will interest physicists working in the field of anomalous diffusion and movement ecology as well as ecologists already familiar with the concepts and methods of statistical physics.