A unique Birobidzhan collection

JEWS AND SOCIALISM

REVOLUTIONARY JEWS FROM MARX TO TROTSKY, by Robert S. Wistrich. London, Harrap, 1976. 254 pp. £6.75.

THE MENSHEVIKS, 1917–39

THE MENSHEVIKS. FROM THE REVOLUTION OF 1917 TO THE SECOND WORLD WAR, ed. by Leopold H. Haimson. Chicago, London, The University of Chicago Press, 1974. xxiii + 476 pp. Appendices. Name Index. Subject Index. (Hoover Institution Publications 117.) £12.40.

POLAND BETWEEN THE WARS

MOZAIKA POLITYCZNA DRUGIEJ RZECZYPOSPOLITEJ (The Political Mosaic of the Second Republic), by Jerzy Holzer. Warsaw, Ksiazka i Wiedza, 1974. 688 pp. Names Index. Index of parties and organization.

CWIERC WIEKU Z KURIEREM WARSZAWSKIM (1914–1939) (Twenty Five Years with the Kurier Warszawski), by Konrad Olchowicz. Cracow, Wydawnictwo Literackie, 1974.

SOVIET VIEWS ON WAR AND DETENTE

CONVERGENCE OF COMMUNISM AND CAPITALISM. THE SOVIET VIEW, by Leon Gouré, Foy D. Kohler, Richard Soll, Annette Stiefbold. Center for Advanced International Studies, University of Miami, 1973. ix, 168 pp. Docs. (Monographs in International Affairs.) $5.95, $4.95 paperback.

SOVIET STRATEGY FOR THE SEVENTIES. FROM COLD WAR TO PEACEFUL COEXISTENCE, by Foy D. Kohler, Moss L. Harvey, Leon Gouré, Richard Soll. Center for Advanced International Studies, University of Miami, 1973. v, 241 pp. Index. (Monographs in International Affairs.) $5.95, $4.95 paperback.

THE SOVIET VIEW OF WAR, PEACE AND NEUTRALITY, by P. H. Vigor. London, Routledge and Kegan, 1975. vii, 256 pp. Bibl. Index. £6.50.

JUDAICA IN HUNGARY

EVKONYV. Kiadja a Magyar Izraeliták Országos Képviselete (Yearbook Published by the Central Council of Hungarian Jewry) 1975–76, by Sandor Scheiber (Ed.). Budapest, 1976. 423pp. Ft. 42.00

MONUMENTA HUNGARIAE JUDAICA. VOL XVI, by Sándor Scheiber and Jenö Házi (Eds.). Budapest, 1974. 565pp. Illus. Index. Ft. 180.00     

Mutual Fund Theorem for continuous time markets with random coefficients

The optimal investment problem is studied for a continuous time incomplete market model. It is assumed that the risk-free rate, the appreciation rates, and the volatility of the stocks are all random; they are independent from the driving Brownian motion, and they are currently observable. It is shown that some weakened version of Mutual Fund Theorem holds for this market for general class of utilities. It is shown that the supremum of expected utilities can be achieved on a sequence of strategies with a certain distribution of risky assets that does not depend on risk preferences described by different utilities.     

Could Pronatalist Policies Discourage Childbearing?

This article builds on research in psychology, economics, and other fields, suggesting that, under certain conditions, extrinsic incentives could undermine intrinsic motivation, producing results opposite to those originally intended. It explores the relevance of these findings for population policies and particularly for pronatalist measures, and argues that reproductive behavior is intrinsically motivated, thus potentially subject to having the intrinsic motivation for childbearing adversely affected by policy interventions. Specifically, it examines whether, when, and how the contingency, universe, adequacy, and other aspects of pronatalist incentives could affect childbearing motivation. For example, parity‐targeted incentives seeking to compel higher fertility could be perceived as controlling and undermine that motivation. Conversely, policies seeking to facilitate combining work and family responsibilities could strengthen the intrinsic motivation for childbearing.     

The Capital City in the Context of accelerated Individualization. Reflections on the Bulgarian Experience

Privatization and competitive politics brought about accelerated individualization in Bulgarian society. Both the constructive and destructive effects of individualization are particularly concentrated in the country's capital city. It rapidly shifted its economic structure from industry to services and re-oriented its territorial morphology from north-west to south-east. These changes mostly took place in a spontaneous and often anomic way thus provoking the need for a new Master Plan of the capital city. Sociological studies supported its preparation. Below the surface of a relatively stable size of the capital's population they revealed substantial migration to Sofia during the 1990s together with continuing large-scale emigration of the young, best educated and entrepreneurial population cohorts. Recent studies confirm this trend despite of the fact that the capital city is economically in the best position in comparison with all other settlements in the country. The conclusion is that the economic, political and cultural re-integration of Bulgarian society is still incomplete and this may be noticed in all its structural levels, administrative and territorial units, the capital city including. Thus, new institutional strategies are needed for coping with the effects of accelerated individualization. In the capital city, the core of these strategies should be the strengthening of the economic, political and cultural basis of its communal integration.     

On Detecting the Dependence of Time Series

The author suggests a heuristic method for detecting the dependence of random time series that can be used in the case when this dependence is relatively weak, such that the traditional methods are not effective. The method requires comparison of some special functionals on the sample characteristic functions with the same functionals computed for the benchmark time series with a known degree of correlation. Some experiments for financial time series are presented.     

Volatility estimation from short time series of stock prices

We consider estimation of the historical volatility of stock prices. It is assumed that the stock prices are represented as time series formed as samples of the solution of a stochastic differential equation with random and time-varying parameters; these parameters are not observable directly and have unknown evolution law. The price samples are available with limited frequency only. In this setting, the estimation has to be based on short time series, and the estimation error can be significant. We suggest some supplements to the existing nonparametric methods of volatility estimation. Two modifications of the standard summation formula for the volatility are derived. In addition, a linear transformation eliminating the appreciation rate and preserving the volatility is suggested.     

A pathwise inference method for the parameters of diffusion terms

We consider inference of the parameters of the diffusion term for continuous time stochastic processes with a power-type dependence of the diffusion coefficient from the underlying process such as Cox–Ingersoll–Ross, CKLS, and similar processes. We suggest some original pathwise estimates for this coefficient and for the power index based on an analysis of an auxiliary continuous time complex-valued process generated by the underlying real-valued process. These estimates do not rely on the distribution of the underlying process and on a particular choice of the drift. Some numerical experiments are used to illustrate the feasibility of the suggested method.