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"Smith, Simon C."
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Break Risk
We develop a new approach to modeling and predicting stock returns in the presence of breaks that simultaneously affect a large cross-section of stocks. Exploiting information in the cross-section enables us to detect breaks in return prediction models with little delay and to generate out-of-sample return forecasts that are significantly more accurate than those from existing approaches. To identify the economic sources of breaks, we explore the asset pricing restrictions implied by a present value model which links breaks in return predictability to breaks in the cash flow growth and discount rate processes.
Journal Article
الكويت في عهد عبد الله السالم (1950-1965) : بريطانيا وآل صباح والنفط
يتناول المؤرخ البريطاني سايمون سي سميث في كتابه هذا الكويت في عهد عبد الله السالم وآل صباح للفترة (1950-1965 م) ويركز الكتاب كما هو واضح من عنوانه الفرعي (بريطانيا وآل الصباح والنفط) على العلاقات بين الكويت وبريطانيا ودور النفط والمؤثرات الخارجية عليهما ويفتتح المؤلف كتابه بمقدمة يتناول فيها بالشرح أوضاع الكويت منذ تولي الشيخ مبارك صباح زمام الحكم فيها عام 1896 م مع تركيز وتفصيل لمجريات الأحداث في حقبة حكم الشيخ أحمد الجابر الصباح 1921-1950م.
Book
Expanding the Active Inference Landscape: More Intrinsic Motivations in the Perception-Action Loop
Active inference is an ambitious theory that treats perception, inference, and action selection of autonomous agents under the heading of a single principle. It suggests biologically plausible explanations for many cognitive phenomena, including consciousness. In active inference, action selection is driven by an objective function that evaluates possible future actions with respect to current, inferred beliefs about the world. Active inference at its core is independent from extrinsic rewards, resulting in a high level of robustness across e.g., different environments or agent morphologies. In the literature, paradigms that share this independence have been summarized under the notion of intrinsic motivations. In general and in contrast to active inference, these models of motivation come without a commitment to particular inference and action selection mechanisms. In this article, we study if the inference and action selection machinery of active inference can also be used by alternatives to the originally included intrinsic motivation. The perception-action loop explicitly relates inference and action selection to the environment and agent memory, and is consequently used as foundation for our analysis. We reconstruct the active inference approach, locate the original formulation within, and show how alternative intrinsic motivations can be used while keeping many of the original features intact. Furthermore, we illustrate the connection to universal reinforcement learning by means of our formalism. Active inference research may profit from comparisons of the dynamics induced by alternative intrinsic motivations. Research on intrinsic motivations may profit from an additional way to implement intrinsically motivated agents that also share the biological plausibility of active inference.
Journal Article
Failure and success in state formation: British policy towards the Federation of South Arabia and the United Arab Emirates
Despite the apparent similarities in Britain's relationship with the Sheikhdoms of the Lower Gulf and the traditional states of southern Arabia, British policy-makers pursued contrasting policies towards the two sets of territories in the era of decolonization. As regards South Arabia, Britain followed a policy of amalgamating the states into a 'Whitehall' federation. The fact that the Federation of South Arabia remained dependent on British backing, and in consequence became ineffably associated with British imperialism in an era of anti-colonial Arab nationalism, fatally damaged its chances of longevity. Applying the lessons of failure in South Arabia, the British were far more inconspicuous in the discussions which led to the creation of the United Arab Emirates (UAE). Indeed, the fact that the UAE essentially emerged from the initiative of Sheikhs Zaid of Abu Dhabi and Rashid of Dubai, rather than the British, was one of the key factors in its survival. By contrast, the Federation of South Arabia collapsed ignominiously once the ballast provided by the British had been removed.
Journal Article
The DIAMOND Model: Deep Recurrent Neural Networks for Self-Organizing Robot Control
The proposed architecture applies the principle of predictive coding and deep learning in a brain-inspired approach to robotic sensorimotor control. It is composed of many layers each of which is a recurrent network. The component networks can be spontaneously active due to the homeokinetic learning rule, a principle that has been studied previously for the purpose of self-organised generation of behaviour. We present robotic simulations that illustrate the function of the network and show evidence that deeper networks enable more complex exploratory behaviour.
Journal Article
'America in Britain's place?': Anglo-American relations and the Middle East in the aftermath of the Suez crisis
Much historical scholarship has depicted Suez as a watershed not merely in British imperial history, but also in Anglo-American relations, marking a decisive shift away from empire and the assumption of British burdens in the Middle East by the USA. The present article, however, argues that this line of argument is too determinist, and indeed simplistic. On the one hand, British policy-makers remained determined to retain as many of their imperial interests in the Middle East as possible and robustly defended these from any signs of US encroachment. On the other hand, the USA demonstrated little interest in replacing the British in the region and indeed sought to preserve as much of the British presence as possible, especially in context of America's ever-deepening commitment to the conflict in Vietnam. The unilateral British decision to withdraw from 'East of Suez' by the end of 1971 dismayed US policy-makers who, rather than seeking to replace the departing British, sought to persuade them to maintain as much of their influence and as many of their interests as possible, especially in the Gulf, beyond 1971.
Journal Article
