Econometric Modelling: Extensions

This chapter is devoted to advanced issues of econometric modelling. The topics covered are, among others, models in willingness to pay space, the meaning of scale heterogeneity in discrete choice models and the application of various information processing rules such as random regret minimisation or attribute non-attendance. Other topics are anchoring and learning effects when respondents move through a sequence of choice tasks as well as different information processing strategies such as lexicographic preferences or choices based on elimination-by-aspects.

Hidden Markov Model Decision Forest for Dynamic Facial Expression Recognition

Facial expressions can be mainly conveyed by only a few discriminative facial regions of interest. In this paper, we study the discriminative regions for facial expression recognition from video sequences. The goal of our method is to explore and make use of the discriminative regions for different facial expressions. For this purpose, we propose a Hidden Markov Model (HMM) Decision Forest (HMMDF). In this framework, each tree node is a discriminative classifier, which is constructed by combining weighted HMMs. Motivated by a psychological theory of "elimination by aspects", several HMMs on each node are modeled respectively for facial regions, which have discriminative capabilities for classification. The weights for these HMMs can be further adjusted according to the contributions of facial regions. Extensive experiments validate the effectiveness of discriminative regions on facial expression, and the experimental results show that the proposed HMMDF framework yields dramatic improvements in facial expression recognition compared to existing methods.

Selection Of Forum For Litigated Tax Issues

<span>The adjudication of federal income tax disputes between the Internal Revenue Service (IRS) and taxpayers takes place in one of three mutually-exclusive trial courts. The courts have several features in common but they differ with respect to a number of important requirements (aspects). This study models taxpayers choice of litigation forum as a function of requirements and constraints of the courts within the purview of the Elimination By Aspects Model (EBAM). The choice of forum is regressed on the contested deficiency using dichotomous and multinomial logit models. For increasing amounts of tax deficiency, the U.S. Tax Court appears to be the court of choice compared to the U.S. Claims Court. However, the magnitude of the contested deficiency does not meaningfully discriminate between the U.S. Tax Court and the U.S district court. A possible explanation is that both courts afford approximately equal probabilities of winning/losing and that taxpayers choose based on that understanding. The results have implications regarding the prepayment requirement in the U.S. Claims Court and U.S. district courts.</span>