Published Papers

Following the importance of gold in the global economy and the high interest that has attracted recently, the objective of this paper is twofold: to predict the price of gold by using the Adaptive Neuro-Fuzzy Inference System (ANFIS) and compare its forecasting accuracy with various time-series forecasting methods and the 'Buy and Hold' (B&H) strategy. The results show that the ANFIS's accuracy is far superior to the performance of all compared methods and therefore ANFIS demonstrates the potential of neuro fuzzy-based modelling for predicting the gold's price.

The chapter presents a new approach to address energy policy and security based upon the ACEGES (Agent-based Computational Economics of the Global Energy System) model and the SPT (stochastic portfolio theory).

The ACEGES model is an agent-based model for exploratory energy policy by means of controlled computational experiments. The ACEGES model is designed to be the foundation for large custom-purpose simulations of the global energy system by modeling explicitly 216 countries.

In this article the financial/ownership structures of agribusiness cooperatives are analyzed to examine whether new cooperative models perform better than the more traditional ones. The assessment procedure introduces a new financial decision-aid approach, which is based on data-analysis techniques in combination with a preference ranking organization method of enrichment evaluations (PROMETHEE II). The application of this multicriteria decision-aid approach allows the rank ordering of cooperatives based on the most prominent financial ratios. The financial ratios were selected using principal component analysis. This analytical procedure reduces the dimensionality of large numbers of interrelated financial performance measures. We assess the financial success of Dutch agribusiness cooperatives for the period 1999-2010. Results show that there is no clear-cut evidence that cooperative models used to attract extra members' investments and/or outside equity perform better than the more traditional models. This suggests that ownership structure of cooperatives is not always a decisive factor for their financial success. [EconLit citations: Q130, G320, C440].