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196 real negative results, null findings, and replication failures in Economics, Econometrics and Finance. Search the index →

WASTE indexes published research — it does not host or republish full papers. Each entry is a metadata record compiled from open scholarly databases; the abstract is shown in full only where the paper is openly licensed, otherwise a short excerpt under fair use. Classifications are automated and approximate.

Negative / Null Result ReportOpen accessEconomics, Econometrics and Finance

Does Anxiety Improve Economic Decision-Making?

Ian Crawford, Carl-Emil Pless · 2026 · arXiv

We study the associations between everyday economic decision-making quality and people's emotional states. Using high-frequency, highly disaggregated consumer "scanner" data, we show that the cost of poor decision-making is substantial, on average equal to around half of day-to-day consumption budgets. While material circumstances help explain decision-making quality, how people feel about those circumstances is equally important. Contrary to evidence that stress and worry impair performance in settings where distraction is costly, we find these same feelings are associated with improved decis

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Negative / Null Result ReportOpen accessEconomics, Econometrics and Finance

Interbank network reconstruction enforcing density and reciprocity

Valentina Macchiati, Piero Mazzarisi, Diego Garlaschelli · 2024 · arXiv

Networks of financial exposures are the key propagators of risk and distress among banks, but their empirical structure is not publicly available because of confidentiality. This limitation has triggered the development of methods of network reconstruction from partial, aggregate information. Unfortunately, even the best methods available fail in replicating the number of directed cycles, which on the other hand play a crucial role in determining graph spectra and hence the degree of network stability and systemic risk. Here we address this challenge by exploiting the hypothesis that the stati

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Negative / Null Result ReportOpen accessEconomics, Econometrics and Finance

Deep Smoothing of the Implied Volatility Surface

Damien Ackerer, Natasa Tagasovska, Thibault Vatter · 2019 · arXiv

We present a neural network (NN) approach to fit and predict implied volatility surfaces (IVSs). Atypically to standard NN applications, financial industry practitioners use such models equally to replicate market prices and to value other financial instruments. In other words, low training losses are as important as generalization capabilities. Importantly, IVS models need to generate realistic arbitrage-free option prices, meaning that no portfolio can lead to risk-free profits. We propose an approach guaranteeing the absence of arbitrage opportunities by penalizing the loss using soft const

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Failed Experiment ReportOpen accessEconomics, Econometrics and Finance

A Note on Delta Hedging in Markets with Jumps

Aleksandar Mijatović, Mikhail Urusov · 2011 · arXiv

Modelling stock prices via jump processes is common in financial markets. In practice, to hedge a contingent claim one typically uses the so-called delta-hedging strategy. This strategy stems from the Black--Merton--Scholes model where it perfectly replicates contingent claims. From the theoretical viewpoint, there is no reason for this to hold in models with jumps. However in practice the delta-hedging strategy is widely used and its potential shortcoming in models with jumps is disregarded since such models are typically incomplete and hence most contingent claims are non-attainable. In this

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Negative / Null Result ReportOpen accessEconomics, Econometrics and Finance

Affine term structure models : a time-changed approach with perfect fit to market curves

Cheikh Mbaye, Frédéric Vrins · 2019 · arXiv

We address the so-called calibration problem which consists of fitting in a tractable way a given model to a specified term structure like, e.g., yield or default probability curves. Time-homogeneous jump-diffusions like Vasicek or Cox-Ingersoll-Ross (possibly coupled with compounded Poisson jumps, JCIR), are tractable processes but have limited flexibility; they fail to replicate actual market curves. The deterministic shift extension of the latter (Hull-White or JCIR++) is a simple but yet efficient solution that is widely used by both academics and practitioners. However, the shift approach

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Negative / Null Result ReportOpen accessEconomics, Econometrics and Finance

A Financial Risk Analysis: Does the 2008 Financial Crisis Give Impact on Weekends Returns of the U.S. Movie Box Office?

Novriana Sumarti, Rafki Hidayat · 2013 · arXiv

The Financial Crisis of 2008 is a worldwide financial crisis causing a worldwide economic decline that is the most severe since the 1930s. According to the International Monetary Fund (IMF), the global financial crisis gave impact on USD 3.4 trillion losses from financial institutions around the world between 2007 and 2010. Does the crisis give impact on the returns of the U.S. movie Box Office? It will be answered by doing an analysis on the financial risk model based on Extreme Value Theory (EVT) and calculations of Value at Risk (VaR) and Expected Shortfall (ES). The values of VaR and ES fr

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Negative / Null Result ReportOpen accessEconomics, Econometrics and Finance

Long-Term Employment Effects of the Minimum Wage in Germany: New Data and Estimators

Marco Caliendo, Nico Pestel, Rebecca Olthaus · 2023 · arXiv

We study the long-term effects of the 2015 German minimum wage introduction and its subsequent increases on regional employment. Using data from two waves of the Structure of Earnings Survey allows us to estimate models that account for changes in the minimum wage bite over time. While the introduction mainly affected the labour market in East Germany, the raises are also increasingly affecting low-wage regions in West Germany, such that around one third of regions have changed their (binary) treatment status over time. We apply different specifications and extensions of the classic difference

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Negative / Null Result ReportOpen accessEconomics, Econometrics and Finance

Assessing and Comparing Fixed-Target Forecasts of Arctic Sea Ice: Glide Charts for Feature-Engineered Linear Regression and Machine Learning Models

Francis X. Diebold, Maximilian Goebel, Philippe Goulet Coulombe · 2022 · arXiv

We use "glide charts" (plots of sequences of root mean squared forecast errors as the target date is approached) to evaluate and compare fixed-target forecasts of Arctic sea ice. We first use them to evaluate the simple feature-engineered linear regression (FELR) forecasts of Diebold and Goebel (2021), and to compare FELR forecasts to naive pure-trend benchmark forecasts. Then we introduce a much more sophisticated feature-engineered machine learning (FEML) model, and we use glide charts to evaluate FEML forecasts and compare them to a FELR benchmark. Our substantive results include the freque

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Negative / Null Result ReportOpen accessEconomics, Econometrics and Finance

The interaction between trade and FDI: the CEE countries experience

Claudiu Tiberiu Albulescu, Daniel Goyeau · 2016 · arXiv

Inside the EU, the commercial integration of the CEE countries has gained remarkable momentum before the crisis appearance, but it has slightly slowed down afterwards. Consequently, the interest in identifying the factors supporting the commercial integration process is high. Recent findings in the new trade theory suggest that FDI influence the trade intensity but the studies approaching this relationship for the CEE countries present mixed evidence, and investigate the commercial integration of CEE countries with the old EU members. Against this background, the purpose of this paper is to as

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Negative / Null Result ReportOpen accessEconomics, Econometrics and Finance

Sanctions and Imports of Essential Goods: A Closer Look at the Equipo Anova (2021) Results

Francisco Rodríguez · 2022 · arXiv

We revisit the results of a recent paper by Equipo Anova, who claim to find evidence of an improvement in Venezuelan imports of food and medicines associated with the adoption of U.S. financial sanctions towards Venezuela in 2017. We show that their results are consequence of data coding errors and questionable methodological choices, including the use an unreasonable functional form that implies a counterfactual of negative imports in the absence of sanctions, the omission of data accounting for four-fifths of the country's food imports at the time of sanctions and incorrect application of re

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Negative / Null Result ReportOpen accessEconomics, Econometrics and Finance

Conditioning on a Volatility Proxy Compresses the Apparent Timescale of Collective Market Correlation

Yuda Bi, Vince D Calhoun · 2026 · arXiv

We address the attribution problem for apparent slow collective dynamics: is the observed persistence intrinsic, or inherited from a persistent driver? For the leading eigenvalue fraction $ψ_1=λ_{\max}/N$ of S\&P 500 60-day rolling correlation matrices ($237$ stocks, 2004--2023), a VIX-coupled Ornstein--Uhlenbeck model reduces the effective relaxation time from $298$ to $61$ trading days and improves the fit over bare mean reversion by $Δ$BIC$=109$. On the decomposition sample, an informational residual of $\log(\mathrm{VIX})$ alone retains most of that gain ($Δ$BIC$=78.6$), whereas a mechanic

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Negative / Null Result ReportOpen accessEconomics, Econometrics and Finance

Has EU accession boosted patents performance in the EU-13? -- A critical evaluation using causal impact analysis with Bayesian structural time-series models

Agnieszka Kleszcz, Krzysztof Rusek · 2022 · arXiv

Nowadays innovation is one of the main determinants of economic development. Patents are a key measure of innovation output, as patent indicators reflect the inventive performance of countries, technologies and firms. This paper provides new insights on the causal effects of the enlargement of the European Union (EU) by investigating the patents performance within the new EU member states (EU-13). The empirical results based on data collected from the OECD database from 1985-2017 and causal impact using a Bayesian structural time-series model (proposed by Google) point towards a conclusion tha

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Negative / Null Result ReportOpen accessEconomics, Econometrics and Finance

Take Caution in Using LLMs as Human Surrogates: Scylla Ex Machina

Yuan Gao, Dokyun Lee, Gordon Burtch et al. · 2024 · arXiv

Recent studies suggest large language models (LLMs) can exhibit human-like reasoning, aligning with human behavior in economic experiments, surveys, and political discourse. This has led many to propose that LLMs can be used as surrogates or simulations for humans in social science research. However, LLMs differ fundamentally from humans, relying on probabilistic patterns, absent the embodied experiences or survival objectives that shape human cognition. We assess the reasoning depth of LLMs using the 11-20 money request game. Nearly all advanced approaches fail to replicate human behavior dis

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Negative / Null Result ReportOpen accessEconomics, Econometrics and Finance

Board gender diversity and emissions performance: Insights from panel regressions, machine learning, and explainable AI

Mohammad Hassan Shakil, Arne Johan Pollestad, Khine Kyaw et al. · 2025 · arXiv

With European Union initiatives mandating gender quotas on corporate boards, a key question arises: Is greater board gender diversity (BGD) associated with better emissions performance (EP)? To answer this question, we examine the influence of BGD on EP across a sample of European firms from 2016 to 2022. Using panel regressions, advanced machine learning algorithms, and explainable AI, we reveal a non-linear relationship. Specifically, EP improves with BGD up to an optimal level of approximately 35 %, beyond which further increases in BGD yield no additional improvement in EP. A minimum BGD t

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Negative / Null Result ReportOpen accessEconomics, Econometrics and Finance

Effects of dynamic capability and marketing strategy on the organizational performance of the banking sector in Makassar, Indonesia

Akhmad Muhammadin, Rashila Ramli, Syamsul Ridjal et al. · 2020 · arXiv

The dynamic capability and marketing strategy are challenges to the banking sector in Indonesia. This study uses a survey method solving 39 banks in Makassar. Data collection was conducted of questionnaires. The results show that, the dynamic capability has a positive yet insignificant impact on the organizational performance, the marketing strategy has a positive and significant effect on organizational performance and, dynamic capability and marketing strategy have a positive and significant effect on the organization's performance in the banking sector in Makassar. Keywords : dynamic capabi

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Negative / Null Result ReportOpen accessEconomics, Econometrics and Finance

Searching for Smurfs: Testing if Money Launderers Know Alert Thresholds

Rasmus Ingemann Tuffveson Jensen, Joras Ferwerda, Christian Remi Wewer · 2023 · arXiv

Objectives: To combat money laundering, banks raise and review alerts on transactions that exceed confidential thresholds. However, the thresholds may be leaked to criminals, allowing them to break up large transactions into amounts under the thresholds. This paper introduces a data-driven approach to detect the phenomenon, popularly known as smurfing. Methods: Our approach compares an observed transaction distribution to a counterfactual distribution estimated using a high-degree polynomial. We investigate the approach with simulation experiments and real transaction data from a systemically

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