Is mathematics “Out there”?

The Opinion column offers mathematicians the apportunity to write about any issue of interest to the international mathematical community. Disagreement and controversy are welcome. The views and opinions expressed here, however, are exclusively those of the author, and neither the publisher nor the editor-chief endorses or accepts responsibility for them. An Opinion should be submitted to the editor-in-chief, Chandler Davis.     

Is public capital really productive? A methodological reappraisal

We present an evaluation of the main empirical approaches used in the literature to estimate the contribution of public capital stock to growth and private factors’ productivity. Based on a simple stochastic general equilibrium model, built as to reproduce the main long-run relations observed in US post-war historical data, we show that the production function approach may not be reliable to estimate this contribution. Our analysis reveals that this approach largely overestimates the public capital elasticity, given the presence of a common stochastic trend shared by all non-stationary inputs.     

Is there chaos in the Spanish labour market?

One could argue that there is a resurgence of the non-linear modelling in economics. Some instruments have been developed to measure the complexity or instability of the analysed systems. At the present work some of these developed techniques are applied to verify the non-linearity present in the time series of Spanish unemployment, as well as to quantify the degree of complexity of the system that has generated the series. Using these techniques we find evidence of chaos in Spanish unemployment time series.     

Is there a role for statistics in artificial intelligence?

Advances in Data Analysis and Classification - The research on and application of artificial intelligence (AI) has triggered a comprehensive scientific, economic, social and political discussion....     

Is there always an extremal Teichmüller mapping?

Given a quasisymmetric self-homeomorphismh of the unit circleS ¹, letQ(h) be the set of all quasiconformal mappings with the boundary correspondenceh. In [1], it was shown that there existsh for which no extremal extension inQ(h) as a Teichmüller mapping is possible. This disproved some conjectures of long standing. In the example constructed there, the boundary correspondence has a single extremal quasiconformal extension. We show that even when there are infinitely many extremal extensions of the boundary values, it may still happen that none of the extensions is a Teichmüller mapping. An infinitesimal version of this result is also obtained. The research was supported by the China Postdoctoral Science Foundation and by the National Natural Science Foundation of China (Grant No. 10401036).     

Is there an easy algebraic characterisation of¶universal proper G-spaces?

We shall study properties of groups having finite cohomological dimension relative to the family of all finite subgroups. We also compare these groups with those satisfying various suggested algebraic analogues to group-actions on finite dimensional proper G-spaces. Received: 15 March 2000     

Is there a causal relation between mathematical creativity and mathematical problem-solving performance?

The relationship between mathematical creativity (MC) and mathematical problem-solving performance (MP) has often been studied but the causal relation between these two constructs has yet to be clearly reported. The main purpose of this study was to define the causal relationship between MC and MP. Data from a representative sample of 480 eighth-grade students were analysed using a cross-lagged panel correlation (CLPC) design. CLPC attempts to rule out plausible alternative explanation of a causal effect. The result suggests that significant predominant causal relationship was found between MC and MP. It indicates that MP was found to be a cause of MC than the converse.     

Impact of insurance for operational risk: Is it worthwhile to insure or be insured for severe losses?

Under the Basel II standards, the Operational Risk (OpRisk) advanced measurement approach allows a provision for reduction of capital as a result of insurance mitigation of up to 20%. This paper studies different insurance policies in the context of capital reduction for a range of extreme loss models and insurance policy scenarios in a multi-period, multiple risk setting. A Loss Distributional Approach (LDA) for modeling of the annual loss process, involving homogeneous compound Poisson processes for the annual losses, with heavy-tailed severity models comprised of α-stable severities is considered. There has been little analysis of such models to date and it is believed insurance models will play more of a role in OpRisk mitigation and capital reduction in future. The first question of interest is when would it be equitable for a bank or financial institution to purchase insurance for heavy-tailed OpRisk losses under different insurance policy scenarios? The second question pertains to Solvency II and addresses quantification of insurer capital for such operational risk scenarios. Considering fundamental insurance policies available, in several two risk scenarios, we can provide both analytic results and extensive simulation studies of insurance mitigation for important basic policies, the intention being to address questions related to VaR reduction under Basel II, SCR under Solvency II and fair insurance premiums in OpRisk for different extreme loss scenarios. In the process we provide closed-form solutions for the distribution of loss processes and claims processes in an LDA structure as well as closed-form analytic solutions for the Expected Shortfall, SCR and MCR under Basel II and Solvency II. We also provide closed-form analytic solutions for the annual loss distribution of multiple risks including insurance mitigation.     

Worst case risk measurement: Back to the future?

This paper studies the problem of finding best-possible upper bounds on a rich class of risk measures, expressible as integrals with respect to measures, under incomplete probabilistic information. Both univariate and multivariate risk measurement problems are considered. The extremal probability distributions, generating the worst case scenarios, are also identified.The problem of worst case risk measurement has been studied extensively by Etienne De Vijlder and his co-authors, within the framework of finite-dimensional convex analysis. This paper revisits and extends some of their results.     

Plates made of piezoelectric materials: When are they really piezoelectric?

This paper aims at presenting in a synthetic way mathematical results that have been rigorously and recently derived by the authors. These results deal with the simplified but accurate modeling of linearly piezoelectric thin plates. It is shown how mathematical tools lead to two different situations linked to either sensors or actuators devices. Moreover we enlighten the fact that for some piezoelectric crystal classes, the coupling between the electrical and the mechanical effects disappear in the plate. Finally, we furnish a detailed example of such models in the case of a plate constituted by a 222 symmetry class material.     

Is there a Trade-Off between Quality and Productivity? The Case of Diagnostic Technologies in Portugal

The purpose of this paper is twofold: first, we compute quality-adjusted measures of productivity change for the three most important diagnostic technologies (i.e., the Computerised Tomography Scan, Electrocardiogram and Echocardiogram) in the major Portuguese hospitals. We use the Malmquist–Luenberger index, which allows to measure productivity growth while controlling for the quality of the production. Second, using non-parametric tests, we analyse whether the implementation of the Prospective Payment System may have had a positive impact on the movements of productivity over time. The results show that the PPS has helped hospitals to use these tools more efficiently and to improve their effectiveness.