Tiivistelmä.

This paper presents results from an econometric analysis of Russian bank defaults during the period 1997-2003, focusing on the extent to which publicly available information from quarterly bank balance sheets is useful in predicting future defaults. Binary choice models are estimated to construct the probability of default model. We find that preliminary expert clustering or automatic clustering improves the predictive power of the models and incor-poration of macrovariables into the models is useful. Heuristic criteria are suggested to help compare model performance from the perspectives of investors or banks supervision authorities. Russian banking system trends after the crisis 1998 are analyzed with rolling regressions.

This collection of articles highlights the most interesting new results from the IX Moscow International Operations Research Conference, the largest Russian meeting in this field, held every three years for leading experts. These papers will interest researchers and organizations specialized in OR, Game Theory, System Analysis, Macro- and Micro-economic Modelling, and Actuarial Mathematics. The volume may be a source for PhD and Master students in the specified areas. The proposed methods for optimal decision making will be useful for insurance and auditing companies, banks, and others. The volume consists of three parts; the first includes game-theoretic models, the second part considers innovations and their possible opposite impact to the growth of GDP and social welfare, as well as new methods for improving reliability of banks’ credit risks, monopolistic competition under heterogeneous labor, interregional trade and different ways of developing the Russian banking system. The last part contains articles on a wide range of optimization problems and their applications.

The two-volume set LNCS 5544-5545 constitutes the refereed proceedings of the 9th International Conference on Computational Science, ICCS 2009, held in Baton Rouge, LA, USA in May 2008. The 60 revised papers of the main conference track presented together with the abstracts of 5 keynote talks and the 138 revised papers from 13 workshops were carefully reviewed and selected for inclusion in the three volumes. The general main track of ICSS 2009 was organized in about 20 parallel sessions addressing the following topics: e-Science Applications and Systems, Scheduling, Software Services and Tools, New Hardware and Its Applications, Computer Networks, Simulation of Complex Systems, Image Processing, Optimization Techniques, and Numerical Methods.

In the era of Big Data our society is given the unique opportunity to understand the inner dynamics and behavior of complex socio-economic systems. Advances in the availability of very large databases, in capabilities for massive data mining, as well as progress in complex systems theory, multi-agent simulation and computational social science open the possibility of modeling phenomena never before successfully achieved. This contributed volume from the Perm Winter School address the problems of the mechanisms and statistics of the socio-economics system evolution with a focus on financial markets powered by the high-frequency data analysis. ​

This handbook presents a systematic overview of approaches to, diversity, and problems involved in interdisciplinary rating methodologies. Historically, the purpose of ratings is to achieve information transparency regarding a given body’s activities, whether in the field of finance, banking, or sports for example. This book focuses on commonly used rating methods in three important fields: finance, sports, and the social sector. In the world of finance, investment decisions are largely shaped by how positively or negatively economies or financial instruments are rated. Ratings have thus become a basis of trust for investors. Similarly, sports evaluation and funding are largely based on core ratings. From local communities to groups of nations, public investment and funding are also dependent on how these bodies are continuously rated against expected performance targets. As such, ratings need to reflect the consensus of all stakeholders on selected aspects of the work and how to evaluate their success. The public should also have the opportunity to participate in this process. The authors examine current rating approaches from a variety of proposals that are closest to the public consensus, analyzing the rating models and summarizing the methods of their construction. This handbook offers a valuable reference guide for managers, analysts, economists, business informatics specialists, and researchers alike.