In economics, adaptive expectations is a hypothesized process by which people form their expectations about what will happen in the future based on what has happened in the past. For example, if people want to create an expectation of the inflation rate in the future, they can refer to past inflation rates to infer some consistencies and could derive a more accurate expectation the more years they consider.
In signal processing, white noise is a random signal having equal intensity at different frequencies, giving it a constant power spectral density. The term is used, with this or similar meanings, in many scientific and technical disciplines, including physics, acoustical engineering, telecommunications, and statistical forecasting. White noise refers to a statistical model for signals and signal sources, rather than to any specific signal. White noise draws its name from white light, although light that appears white generally does not have a flat power spectral density over the visible band.
In finance and economics, systematic risk is vulnerability to events which affect aggregate outcomes such as broad market returns, total economy-wide resource holdings, or aggregate income. In many contexts, events like earthquakes, epidemics and major weather catastrophes pose aggregate risks that affect not only the distribution but also the total amount of resources. That is why it is also known as contingent risk, unplanned risk or risk events. If every possible outcome of a stochastic economic process is characterized by the same aggregate result, the process then has no aggregate risk.
In statistics, econometrics, epidemiology and related disciplines, the method of instrumental variables (IV) is used to estimate causal relationships when controlled experiments are not feasible or when a treatment is not successfully delivered to every unit in a randomized experiment. Intuitively, IVs are used when an explanatory variable of interest is correlated with the error term, in which case ordinary least squares and ANOVA give biased results. A valid instrument induces changes in the explanatory variable but has no independent effect on the dependent variable, allowing a researcher to uncover the causal effect of the explanatory variable on the dependent variable.
In statistics, omitted-variable bias (OVB) occurs when a statistical model leaves out one or more relevant variables. The bias results in the model attributing the effect of the missing variables to those that were included.
The Granger causality test is a statistical hypothesis test for determining whether one time series is useful in forecasting another, first proposed in 1969. Ordinarily, regressions reflect "mere" correlations, but Clive Granger argued that causality in economics could be tested for by measuring the ability to predict the future values of a time series using prior values of another time series. Since the question of "true causality" is deeply philosophical, and because of the post hoc ergo propter hoc fallacy of assuming that one thing preceding another can be used as a proof of causation, econometricians assert that the Granger test finds only "predictive causality". Using the term "causality" alone is a misnomer, as Granger-causality is better described as "precedence", or, as Granger himself later claimed in 1977, "temporally related". Rather than testing whether Xcauses Y, the Granger causality tests whether X forecastsY.
In statistics, ordinary least squares (OLS) is a type of linear least squares method for estimating the unknown parameters in a linear regression model. OLS chooses the parameters of a linear function of a set of explanatory variables by the principle of least squares: minimizing the sum of the squares of the differences between the observed dependent variable in the given dataset and those predicted by the linear function of the independent variable.
In econometrics, endogeneity broadly refers to situations in which an explanatory variable is correlated with the error term. The distinction between endogenous and exogenous variables originated in simultaneous equations models, where one separates variables whose values are determined by the model from variables which are predetermined; ignoring simultaneity in the estimation leads to biased estimates as it violates the exogeneity assumption of the Gauss–Markov theorem. The problem of endogeneity is often, unfortunately, ignored by researchers conducting non-experimental research and doing so precludes making policy recommendations. Instrumental variable techniques are commonly used to address this problem.
Vector autoregression (VAR) is a statistical model used to capture the relationship between multiple quantities as they change over time. VAR is a type of stochastic process model. VAR models generalize the single-variable (univariate) autoregressive model by allowing for multivariate time series. VAR models are often used in economics and the natural sciences.
In probability theory, stochastic drift is the change of the average value of a stochastic (random) process. A related concept is the drift rate, which is the rate at which the average changes. For example, a process that counts the number of heads in a series of fair coin tosses has a drift rate of 1/2 per toss. This is in contrast to the random fluctuations about this average value. The stochastic mean of that coin-toss process is 1/2 and the drift rate of the stochastic mean is 0, assuming 1 = heads and 0 = tails.
In statistics and econometrics, panel data and longitudinal data are both multi-dimensional data involving measurements over time. Panel data is a subset of longitudinal data where observations are for the same subjects each time.
In statistics, the Durbin–Watson statistic is a test statistic used to detect the presence of autocorrelation at lag 1 in the residuals from a regression analysis. It is named after James Durbin and Geoffrey Watson. The small sample distribution of this ratio was derived by John von Neumann. Durbin and Watson applied this statistic to the residuals from least squares regressions, and developed bounds tests for the null hypothesis that the errors are serially uncorrelated against the alternative that they follow a first order autoregressive process. Note that the distribution of this test statistic does not depend on the estimated regression coefficients and the variance of the errors.
In statistics and econometrics, a distributed lag model is a model for time series data in which a regression equation is used to predict current values of a dependent variable based on both the current values of an explanatory variable and the lagged values of this explanatory variable.
Stochastic control or stochastic optimal control is a sub field of control theory that deals with the existence of uncertainty either in observations or in the noise that drives the evolution of the system. The system designer assumes, in a Bayesian probability-driven fashion, that random noise with known probability distribution affects the evolution and observation of the state variables. Stochastic control aims to design the time path of the controlled variables that performs the desired control task with minimum cost, somehow defined, despite the presence of this noise. The context may be either discrete time or continuous time.
In time series analysis, the moving-average model, also known as moving-average process, is a common approach for modeling univariate time series. The moving-average model specifies that the output variable depends linearly on the current and various past values of a stochastic term.
An error correction model (ECM) belongs to a category of multiple time series models most commonly used for data where the underlying variables have a long-run common stochastic trend, also known as cointegration. ECMs are a theoretically-driven approach useful for estimating both short-term and long-term effects of one time series on another. The term error-correction relates to the fact that last-period's deviation from a long-run equilibrium, the error, influences its short-run dynamics. Thus ECMs directly estimate the speed at which a dependent variable returns to equilibrium after a change in other variables.
Real business-cycle theory is a class of new classical macroeconomics models in which business-cycle fluctuations are accounted for by real shocks. Unlike other leading theories of the business cycle, RBC theory sees business cycle fluctuations as the efficient response to exogenous changes in the real economic environment. That is, the level of national output necessarily maximizes expected utility, and governments should therefore concentrate on long-run structural policy changes and not intervene through discretionary fiscal or monetary policy designed to actively smooth out economic short-term fluctuations.
In econometrics, the Arellano–Bond estimator is a generalized method of moments estimator used to estimate dynamic models of panel data. It was proposed in 1991 by Manuel Arellano and Stephen Bond, based on the earlier work by Alok Bhargava and John Denis Sargan in 1983, for addressing certain endogeneity problems. The GMM-SYS estimator is a system that contains both the levels and the first difference equations. It provides an alternative to the standard first difference GMM estimator.
In applied statistics, fractional models are, to some extent, related to binary response models. However, instead of estimating the probability of being in one bin of a dichotomous variable, the fractional model typically deals with variables that take on all possible values in the unit interval. One can easily generalize this model to take on values on any other interval by appropriate transformations. Examples range from participation rates in 401(k) plans to television ratings of NBA games.
In statistics, linear regression is a linear approach to modelling the relationship between a scalar response and one or more explanatory variables. The case of one explanatory variable is called simple linear regression; for more than one, the process is called multiple linear regression. This term is distinct from multivariate linear regression, where multiple correlated dependent variables are predicted, rather than a single scalar variable.
