Paul R. Dewick

The objective of this study is to determine attitudinal changes within the African country of Malawi during the early stages of the COVID-19 pandemic between the months of May and June 2020. This study is relevant and will serve as a baseline that will allow for tracking attitudinal change throughout the COVID-19 pandemic. This will give insight to areas where extra resources, information, healthcare workers, and information can be applied to the Malawi population should a similar event occur. Propensity score methods are used for this study as it is a methodology that allows for making causal statements about treatment effects, known here as the participants attitudes to COVID-19. Both single level and multilevel propensity score modelling methods are undertaken as there is an identified need for multilevel modelling which was undertaken using a fixed effects approach. This study highlights that the multilevel modeling methodology used for any study be carefully assessed and not just be granted in using a random effects methodology. This study identifies the utility of propensity score methods in highlighting methodological issues of a survey study. Propensity score methods highlighted a large, unbalanced dataset that shows possible bias in the undertaking of the survey. Further, Featured Indicator Variables are created in aiding contextual effect modelling and the interpretation of the results. This study although limited to the early stages of the COVID-19 pandemic within Malawi, serves as a baseline for longitudinal studies and interrupted time–series modelling. This study highlights determining attitudinal change, not only for Malawi but the methodology can be used for other countries in prediction, directing resources, information, health care workers, and services should a similar event occur.

Various statistical distributions have played significant roles in financial data analytics in recent decades. Among these, elliptical modeling has gained popularity, while the study and application of skew-elliptical modeling have garnered increased attention in various domains. This paper begins by acknowledging the notable accomplishments and contributions of Professor Chris Heyde in the field of financial data modeling. We provide a comprehensive review of elliptical and skew-elliptical modeling, summarizing the latest advancements. In particular, we focus on the characteristics, estimation methods, and diagnostics of elliptical and skew-elliptical distributions in regression and time series models, as well as copula modeling. Furthermore, we discuss several related applications in regression and time series models, including estimation and diagnostic methods. The main objective of this paper is to address the critical need for accurately identifying the underlying elliptical distribution, whether it is elliptical or skew-elliptical. This identification is essential for conducting local influence diagnostics and employing appropriate regression methods using suitable elliptical modeling techniques. To illustrate this process, we present examples that demonstrate the identification of the elliptical distribution, starting with the Box–Jenkins methodology and progressing to copula modeling. The inclusion of copula modeling is motivated by its effectiveness in conjunction with elliptical and skew-elliptical distributions, as it aids in distinguishing between the two. Ultimately, the findings of this paper offer valuable insights, as correctly determining the elliptical and skew-elliptical distribution enables the application of suitable local influence and regression methods, thereby contributing to financial portfolio management, business analytics, and insurance analytics, ensuring the accurate specification of models.

The financial market is a complex system with chaotic behavior that can lead to wild swings within the financial system. This can drive the system into a variety of interesting phenomenon such as phase transitions, bubbles, and crashes, and so on. Of interest in financial modelling is identifying the distribution and the stylized facts of a particular time series, as the distribution and stylized facts can determine if volatility is present, resulting in financial risk and contagion. Regression modelling has been used within this study as a methodology to identify the goodness-of-fit between the original and generated time series model, which serves as a criterion for model selection. Different time series modelling methods that include the common Box–Jenkins ARIMA, ARMA-GARCH type methods, the Geometric Brownian Motion type models and Tsallis entropy based models when data size permits, can use this methodology in model selection. Determining the time series distribution and stylized facts has utility, as the distribution allows for further modelling opportunities such as bivariate regression and copula modelling, apart from the usual forecasting. Determining the distribution and stylized facts also allows for the identification of the parameters that are used within a Geometric Brownian Motion forecasting model. This study has used the Carbon Emissions Futures price between the dates of 1 May 2012 and 1 May 2022, to highlight this application of regression modelling.

Copula modelling is a popular tool in analysing the dependencies between variables. Copula modelling allows the investigation of tail dependencies, which is of particular interest in risk and survival applications. Copula modelling is also of specific interest to economic and financial modelling as it can help in the prediction of financial contagion and periods of “boom” or “bust”. Bivariate copula modelling has a rich variety of copulas that may be chosen to represent the modelled dataset dependencies and possible extreme events that may lie within the dataset tails. Financial copula modelling tends to diverge as this richness of copula types within the literature may not be well realised with the two different types of modelling, one being non-time-series and the other being time-series, being undertaken differently. This paper investigates standard copula modelling and financial copula modelling and shows why the modelling strategies in using time-series and non-time-series copula modelling is undertaken using different methods. This difference, apart from the issues surrounding the time-series component, is mostly due to standard copula modelling having the ability to use empirical CDFs for the probability integral transformation. Financial time-series copula modelling uses pseudo-CDFs due to the standardized time-series residuals being centred around zero. The standardized residuals inhibit the estimation of the possible distributions required for constructing the copula model in the usual manner.