Co-sponsored by:
Office of the Comptroller of the Currency
Department of Economics (American University)
College of Arts & Sciences (American University)
Center for Science of Information (Purdue)
International Association for Applied Econometrics (IAAE)
Info-Metrics Institute: Fifth Year Anniversary
Recent Innovations in Info-Metrics
An Interdisciplinary Perspective
Conference Chair: Aman Ullah (UC Riverside)
American University Campus
Friday, October 31 and Saturday, November 1, 2014
Program
Friday, October 31
(Location: Mary Graydon Center 4 & 5)
Shuttle service arrives to campus by 8:45 AM
8:30-9:25 AM
Registration-Coffee-Refreshments (Light Breakfast)
9:30-9:40 AM
Welcoming Remarks
Cornelius M. Kerwin, President, American University
9:40-10:00 AM:
Conference Opener/Objectives
Amos Golan (Economics and Info-Metrics, American U) and Aman Ullah
(Economics UC, Riverside)
10:00-11:10 AM:
SESSION I: INFO-METRICS, MICRO, AND FINANCE
Chair: Eric Renault (Economics, Brown)
1. Essie Maasoumi (Economics, Emory) and L. Wang, The gender earnings gap: Measurement and
analysis
2. Michael Stutzer (Finance U Colorado, Boulder), Entropy asset pricing error diagnostics
3. Decancq Koen (Social Policy, U. Antwerp, Belgium), Long-term trends in US family earnings
inequality: Disentangling impacts of earnings correlation, joint labor supply and assortative
mating
4. Marine Carrasco (Economics, U. Montreal) and B. Rossi, In-sample inference and forecasting in
mis-specified factor models
11:10-11:20 AM:
Coffee Break
11:25 AM-12:05 PM: SESSION II: INFORMATION THEORY IN PHYSICS
Chair: Luciano Floridi (Philosophy and Ethics, Oxford)
1. Constantino Tsallis (Theoretical Physics, Centro Brasileiro de Pesquisas Fisicas and National
Institute of Science and Technology for Complex Systems, Brazil), Non-additive entropies –
Foundations and applications in Physics and elsewhere
12:05-1:00 PM:
Lunch (Provided)
1:00-2:00 PM:
SESSION III: UNCERTAINTY AND DISAGREEMENT OF ECONOMIC
FORECASTERS
Organizer: Ehsan Soofi (Management Science and Statistics, UW Milwaukee)
Chair: Alastair Hall (Econometrics, U. Manchester, UK)
1. K. Lahiri (Economics, Health Policy, Mgt., & Behavior, SUNY, Albany), Measuring Uncertainty
of a combined forecast and the role of disagreement
2. Mehdi Shoja and Ehsan Soofi (Management Science and Statistics, UW Milwaukee), Information
provided by the uncertainty and disagreement of economic forecasters
3. Luciano Floridi (Philosophy and Ethics, Oxford), The Value of uncertainty
2:00-3:00 PM:
SESSION IV: ADVANCES IN COMPUTER SCIENCE AND PHYSICS OF
INFORMATION
Chair: Robert Lerman (Economics, American U and Urban Institute)
1. Wojciech (Wojtek) Szpankowski (Computer Science and Director Center for Science of Info.,
Purdue), Frontiers of science of information: research at the center for science of information
2. Nate Harshman (Physics, American U), The Ontic, the Epistemic, and the Worries of quantum
information
3. Ariel Caticha (Physics, SUNY Albany), Entropic dynamics
3:05-3:25 PM:
Coffee Break
3:25-4:05 PM:
SESSION V: VALUE OF INFORMATION
Chair: Teddy Seidenfeld (Philosophy and Statistics, Carnegie Mellon)
1. J. Michael Dunn (Informatics and Computing, Philosophy, Indiana U), Risk and the value of
information
2. A. Golan and Radu Balan (Mathematics and CSCAMM, U. MD College Park), On the intrinsic
value of information
4:05-4:15 PM:
A Short Coffee Break
4:15-5:45 PM:
SESSION VI: INFORMATION THEORY FOR TESTING AND
ESTIMATION I
Chair: Refik Soyer (Management Science, George Washington U)
1. M. Andrews, Alastair R. Hall (Econometrics, U. Manchester, UK), R. Khatoon, and J.Lincoln,
Info-metric methods for grouped data
2. S. Chaudhurui and Eric Renault (Economics, Brown), Improvements of score tests by the use of
implied probabilities from entropy maximization
3. Richard Smith (Economics, Cambridge, UK), Additional conditional moment tests
4. Jungyoon Lee and Peter M Robinson (Economics, London School of Economics), Panel
Nonparametric Regression with Fixed Effects
5:50 PM:
Welcoming to the Reception Remarks
Dennis Glennon (Director, Credit Risk Analysis Division, Office of the Comptroller of the Currency)
6:00 – 7:30 PM:
RECEPTION (Mary Graydon Center 2 & 3)
Reception is sponsored by the Center for Science of Information (Purdue)
Shuttle will pick up guests after the reception (at about 7:30 PM) outside of Mary Graydon Center
Saturday, November 1
(Location: Mary Graydon Center 4 & 5)
Shuttle service arrives to campus by 8:30 AM
8:00-9:00 AM:
Coffee-Refreshments (Light Breakfast)
9:00- 9:50 AM:
SESSION VII: INFORMATION THEORY, UTILITY–DRIVEN
BEHAVIOR, AND BIOLOGY
Organizer: David Wolpert (Santa Fe Inst)
Chair: Werner Ploberger (Economics, Washington U, St. Louis)
1. Duncan Foley (Economics, New School for Social Research and Santa Fe Inst.), An ensemble
approach to theory choice
2. David Wolpert (Santa Fe Institute) The information geometry underlying noncooperative game
theory
3. Michael Lachmann (Evolutionary Anthropology, Max Planck Inst and Santa Fe Inst.), A value
for information in Biology
9:55-10:35 AM:
SESSION VIII: MAXIMUM ENTROPY AND INFERENCE IN ECOLOGY
Chair: Robin Lumsdaine (Finance, American U)
1. John Harte (Environmental Science, UC Berkeley), Maximum entropy and the inference of
pattern, process, and dynamics in Ecology
10:40-10:55 AM:
Coffee Break
10:55-11:45 AM:
SESSION IX: INFO-METRICS ECONOMETRICS
Chair: Rossella Bernardini Papalia (Statistics, U Bologna, Italy)
1. Hwan-sik Choi (Economics, Binghamton U.), Information theory for maximum likelihood
estimation of diffusion models
2. Alexis Akira Toda (Economics, UC San Diego), Error estimate and convergence analysis of
moment-preserving discrete approximations of continuous distributions
3. E. Renault and Daniela Scida (Economics, Brown), Causality and Markovianity: information
theoretic measures
4. Kenric Nelson (Raytheon Integrated Defense System), Reduced perplexity: uncertainty measures
without entropy
11:45 AM-12:30 PM: SESSION X: INFORMATION PROCESSING, LEARNING AND
VISUALIZATION
Chair: Nick Kiefer (Economics, Cornell)
1. John Geweke (Economics Discipline Group, U. Technology Sydney) and B. Frischknecht, Exact
optimization by means of sequentially adaptive Bayesian learning
2. Min Chen (Scientific Visualization, Oxford), Measuring information in visualization
12:30-1:30 PM:
Lunch (Provided)
1:30-2:10 PM: SESSION XI: INFORMATION THEORY FOR TESTING AND ESTIMATION II
Chair: Marine Carrasco (Economics, U. Montreal)
1. Werner Ploberger (Economics, Washington U, St. Louis), On the consistency of informationmatrix –type tests
2. Yuichi Kitamura (Economics, Yale) and T. Otsu: Empirical likelihood and measurement error
2:10-3:00 PM:
SESSION XII: INFO-METRICS WITH NONPARAMETRIC AND SEMIPARAMETRIC METHODS
Organizer: Jeff Racine (Economics, Statistics, Mathematics, McMaster U.)
Chair: Jeff Racine (Economics, Statistics, Mathematics, McMaster U.)
1. K. Wan and Ximing Wu (Agricultural Economics, Texas A&M U), Spatially smoothed kernel
density estimations via empirical likelihood
2. Victor Yakovenko (Physics, U MD), Evolution of global inequality in energy consumption as
entropy-maximizing process
3. A. Golan, Yundong Tu (Management and Stat Sci, Peking University) and A. Ullah, Parametric
and nonparametric model averaging using generalized entropy
3:00-3:20 PM:
Coffee Break
3:20-4:20 PM:
SESSION XIII: INFORMATION-THEORETIC APPROACHES TO
COMPLEX BIOLOGICAL SYSTEMS
Organizer: Ilya Nemenman (Physics and Biology, Emory)
Chair: Sherman Robinson (IFPRI)
1. Ilya Nemenman (Physics and Biology, Emory), Adaptation or adaptation
2. Bryan Daniel (Center for Complexity and Collective Computation, U. Wisconsin, Madison),
Information amplification and critically in a social system
3. David Schwab, (Physics, Northwestern U), Mechanistic models of multicellular computation
4:25-4:45 PM:
SESSION XIV: COMPLEXITY AND FACTICITY
Chair: Ehsan Soofi (Management Science and Statistics, UW Milwaukee)
1. Pieter Adriaans (Institute for Informatics University of Amsterdam), Five years of facticity
research
4:45 – 5:00 PM:
Coffee Break
5:00-6:20 PM:
INFO-METRICS ROUND TABLE
Moderator: Robin Lumsdaine (Finance, American U)
Rossella Bernardini Papalia (U Bologna, Italy)
J. Michael Dunn (Indiana U Bloomington)
Nick Kiefer (Cornell)
Constantino Tsallis (Centro Brasileiro de Pesquisas Fisicas and National Institute of Science
and Technology for Complex Systems, Brazil)
Min Chen (Oxford U)
Richard Smith (Cambridge U)