Applications of Optimal Transport to Economics and Related Topics

Often, when a new successful data processing techniques appears in one of the application areas, it then proves to be useful in many other areas. This was the case of optimal transportation techniques: these techniques were first developed for transportation problems, but now they have been shown to be successful in many statistical applications, including applications to economics. These techniques are the main focus of this book, but this book also contain papers that use other techniques, ranging from more traditional statistical approaches to more recent ones such as stochastic frontier methods, multivariable quantiles, random forest, and deep learning. Applications include all aspects of economics, from production (including agricultural) to trade (including international) and finances, with relation to issues of crime (including computer crime and cyberbullying), demographics, economic freedom, environment, health, and tourism. We hope that this volume will: help practitioners to become better knowledgeable of the state-of-the-art econometric techniques, especially optimal transport techniques, and help researchers to further develop these important research directions. We want to thank all the authors for their contributions and all anonymous referees for their thorough analysis and helpful comments. The publication of this volume was partly supported by the Faculty of Economics of the Chiang Mai University, Thailand. Our thanks to the leadership and staff of the Chiang Mai University for providing crucial support. Our special thanks to Prof. Hung T. Nguyen for his valuable advice and constant support.