EFFECTS OF DEMOGRAPHIC STRUCTURE IN GROWTH ACCOUNTING AND LABOUR MARKET DECOMPOSITIONS

Impact of demographic structure on labor market and macroeconomic aggregates might be pronounced in some countries. Despite this fact, only a handful of approaches dealing with quantifications such effects have been derived so far. The aim of this paper is therefore to fill this methodological gap and to introduce methodological approaches for capturing changes in demographic structure, with many applications in growth accounting and labor market decompositions. Firstly, a novel additive decomposition will be presented, as an alternative to traditional models using fixed population weights. This will be followed by the presentation of a multiplicative decomposition, which can be applied to all kinds of growth accounting exercises based on multiplicative identities.

Density Forecast of Financial Returns Using Decomposition and Maximum Entropy

We consider a multiplicative decomposition of the financial returns to improve the density forecasts of financial returns. The multiplicative decomposition is based on the identity that financial return is the product of its absolute value and its sign. Advantages of modeling the two components are discussed. To reduce the effect of the estimation error due to the multiplicative decomposition in estimation of the density forecast model, we impose a moment constraint that the conditional mean forecast is set to match with the sample mean. Imposing such a moment constraint operates a shrinkage and tilts the density forecast of the decomposition model to produce the improved maximum entropy density forecast. An empirical application to forecasting density of the daily stock returns demonstrates the benefits of using the decomposition and imposing the moment constraint to obtain the improved density forecast. We evaluate the density forecast by comparing the logarithmic score (LS), the quantile score (QS), and the continuous ranked probability score (CRPS). We contribute to the literature on the density forecast and the decomposition models by showing that the density forecast of the decomposition model can be improved by imposing a sensible constraint in the maximum entropy framework.

Effects of Demographic Structure in Labour Market Decompositions

Impact of demographic structure on labor market and macroeconomic aggregates might be pronounced in some countries. Despite this fact, only a handful of approaches dealing with quantifications such effects have been derived so far. The aim of this paper is therefore to fill this methodological gap and to introduce methodological approaches for capturing changes in demographic structure, with many applications in growth accounting and labor market decompositions. Firstly, a novel additive decomposition will be presented, as an alternative to traditional models using fixed population weights. This will be followed by the presentation of a multiplicative decomposition, which can be applied to all kinds of growth accounting exercises based on multiplicative identities.JEL classificationJ11; C02

The mathematical foundations of anelasticity: existence of smooth global intermediate configurations

A central tool of nonlinear anelasticity is the multiplicative decomposition of the deformation tensor that assumes that the deformation gradient can be decomposed as a product of an elastic and an anelastic tensor. It is usually justified by the existence of an intermediate configuration. Yet, this configuration cannot exist in Euclidean space, in general, and the mathematical basis for this assumption is on unsatisfactory ground. Here, we derive a sufficient condition for the existence of global intermediate configurations, starting from a multiplicative decomposition of the deformation gradient. We show that these global configurations are unique up to isometry. We examine the result of isometrically embedding these configurations in higher-dimensional Euclidean space, and construct multiplicative decompositions of the deformation gradient reflecting these embeddings. As an example, for a family of radially symmetric deformations, we construct isometric embeddings of the resulting intermediate configurations, and compute the residual stress fields explicitly.

Multiplicative Decomposition of Heterogeneity in Mixtures of Continuous Distributions

A system’s heterogeneity (diversity) is the effective size of its event space, and can be quantified using the Rényi family of indices (also known as Hill numbers in ecology or Hannah–Kay indices in economics), which are indexed by an elasticity parameter q≥0. Under these indices, the heterogeneity of a composite system (the γ-heterogeneity) is decomposable into heterogeneity arising from variation within and between component subsystems (the α- and β-heterogeneity, respectively). Since the average heterogeneity of a component subsystem should not be greater than that of the pooled system, we require that γ≥α. There exists a multiplicative decomposition for Rényi heterogeneity of composite systems with discrete event spaces, but less attention has been paid to decomposition in the continuous setting. We therefore describe multiplicative decomposition of the Rényi heterogeneity for continuous mixture distributions under parametric and non-parametric pooling assumptions. Under non-parametric pooling, the γ-heterogeneity must often be estimated numerically, but the multiplicative decomposition holds such that γ≥α for q>0. Conversely, under parametric pooling, γ-heterogeneity can be computed efficiently in closed-form, but the γ≥α condition holds reliably only at q=1. Our findings will further contribute to heterogeneity measurement in continuous systems.

Electrostrictive polymer plates as electro-elastic material surfaces: Modeling, analysis, and simulation

In this article we discuss modeling of electrostrictive polymer plates as electro-elastic material surfaces. A complete direct approach is developed without the need to involve the three-dimensional formulation. Ponderomotive forces and couples as well as constitutive coupling by means of electrostriction are accounted for. We propose a rational formulation for the augmented free energy of electro-elastic material surfaces incorporating electrostriction by a multiplicative decomposition of the surface stretch tensor and an additive decomposition of the surface curvature tensor into elastic and electrical parts. Numerical results computed within the framework of this complete direct approach are compared to results computed with a method that requires the numerical integration of the three-dimensional augmented free energy through the thickness of the plate and to alternative formulations reported in the literature.