This paper considers a generalized panel data transformation model with fixed effects where the structural function is assumed to be additive. In our model, no parametric assumptions are imposed on the transformation function, the structural function, or the distribution of the idiosyncratic error term. The model is widely applicable and includes many popular panel data models as special cases. We propose a kernel-based nonparametric estimator for the structural function. The estimator has a closed-form solution and is easy to implement. We study the asymptotic properties of our estimator and show that it is asymptotically normally distributed. The Monte Carlo simulations demonstrate that our new estimator performs well in finite samples.

We estimate the density and its derivatives using a local polynomial approximation to the logarithm of an unknown density function f. The estimator is guaranteed to be non-negative and achieves the same optimal rate of convergence in the interior as on the boundary of the support of f. The estimator is therefore well-suited to applications in which non-negative density estimates are required, such as in semiparametric maximum likelihood estimation. In addition, we show that our estimator compares favorably with other kernel-based methods, both in terms of asymptotic performance and computational ease. Simulation results confirm that our method can perform similarly or better in finite samples compared to these alternative methods when they are used with optimal inputs, that is, an Epanechnikov kernel and optimally chosen bandwidth sequence. We provide code in several languages.

This paper highlights a tension between semiparametric efficiency and bootstrap consistency in the context of a canonical semiparametric estimation problem, namely the problem of estimating the average density. It is shown that although simple plug-in estimators suffer from bias problems preventing them from achieving semiparametric efficiency under minimal smoothness conditions, the nonparametric bootstrap automatically corrects for this bias and that, as a result, these seemingly inferior estimators achieve bootstrap consistency under minimal smoothness conditions. In contrast, several “debiased” estimators that achieve semiparametric efficiency under minimal smoothness conditions do not achieve bootstrap consistency under those same conditions.

In this paper, we present a new nonparametric method for estimating a conditional quantile function and develop its weak convergence theory. The proposed estimator is computationally easy to implement and automatically ensures quantile monotonicity by construction. For inference, we propose to use a residual bootstrap method. Our Monte Carlo simulations show that this new estimator compares well with the check-function-based estimator in terms of estimation mean squared error. The bootstrap confidence bands yield adequate coverage probabilities. An empirical example uses a dataset of Canadian high school graduate earnings, illustrating the usefulness of the proposed method in applications.

A popular validation procedure for Dynamic Stochastic General Equilibrium (DSGE) models consists in comparing the structural shocks and impulse-response functions obtained by estimation-calibration of the DSGE with those obtained in an Structural Vector Autoregressions (SVAR) identified by means of some of the DSGE restrictions. I show that this practice can be seriously misleading when the variables used in the SVAR contain measurement errors. If this is the case, for generic values of the parameters of the DSGE, the shocks estimated in the SVAR are not “made of” the corresponding structural shocks plus measurement error. Rather, each of the SVAR shocks is contaminated by noncorresponding structural shocks. We argue that High-Dimensional Dynamic Factor Models are free from this drawback and are the natural model to use in validation procedures for DSGEs.

This paper introduces a novel wild bootstrap for dependent data (WBDD) as a means of calculating standard errors of estimators and constructing confidence regions for parameters based on dependent heterogeneous data. The consistency of the bootstrap variance estimator for smooth function of the sample mean is shown to be robust against heteroskedasticity and dependence of unknown form. The first-order asymptotic validity of the WBDD in distribution approximation is established when data are assumed to satisfy a near epoch dependent condition and under the framework of the smooth function model. The WBDD offers a viable alternative to the existing non parametric bootstrap methods for dependent data. It preserves the second-order correctness property of blockwise bootstrap (provided we choose the external random variables appropriately), for stationary time series and smooth functions of the mean. This desirable property of any bootstrap method is not known for extant wild-based bootstrap methods for dependent data. Simulation studies illustrate the finite-sample performance of the WBDD.

We study identification in nonparametric regression models with a misclassified and endogenous binary regressor when an instrument is correlated with misclassification error. We show that the regression function is nonparametrically identified if one binary instrument variable and one binary covariate satisfy the following conditions. The instrumental variable corrects endogeneity; the instrumental variable must be correlated with the unobserved true underlying binary variable, must be uncorrelated with the error term in the outcome equation, but is allowed to be correlated with the misclassification error. The covariate corrects misclassification; this variable can be one of the regressors in the outcome equation, must be correlated with the unobserved true underlying binary variable, and must be uncorrelated with the misclassification error. We also propose a mixture-based framework for modeling unobserved heterogeneous treatment effects with a misclassified and endogenous binary regressor and show that treatment effects can be identified if the true treatment effect is related to an observed regressor and another observable variable.

We study linear subset regression in the context of the high-dimensional overall model $y = \vartheta +\theta ' z + \epsilon $ with univariate response y and a d-vector of random regressors z, independent of $\epsilon $. Here, “high-dimensional” means that the number d of available explanatory variables is much larger than the number n of observations. We consider simple linear submodels where y is regressed on a set of p regressors given by $x = M'z$, for some $d \times p$ matrix M of full rank $p < n$. The corresponding simple model, that is, $y=\alpha +\beta ' x + e$, is usually justified by imposing appropriate restrictions on the unknown parameter $\theta $ in the overall model; otherwise, this simple model can be grossly misspecified in the sense that relevant variables may have been omitted. In this paper, we establish asymptotic validity of the standard F-test on the surrogate parameter $\beta $, in an appropriate sense, even when the simple model is misspecified, that is, without any restrictions on $\theta $ whatsoever and without assuming Gaussian data.

Spatial units typically vary over many of their characteristics, introducing potential unobserved heterogeneity which invalidates commonly used homoskedasticity conditions. In the presence of unobserved heteroskedasticity, methods based on the quasi-likelihood function generally produce inconsistent estimates of both the spatial parameter and the coefficients of the exogenous regressors. A robust generalized method of moments estimator as well as a modified likelihood method have been proposed in the literature to address this issue. The present paper constructs an alternative indirect inference (II) approach which relies on a simple ordinary least squares procedure as its starting point. Heteroskedasticity is accommodated by utilizing a new version of continuous updating that is applied within the II procedure to take account of the parameterization of the variance–covariance matrix of the disturbances. Finite-sample performance of the new estimator is assessed in a Monte Carlo study. The approach is implemented in an empirical application to house price data in the Boston area, where it is found that spatial effects in house price determination are much more significant under robustification to heterogeneity in the equation errors.

We propose a novel conditional quantile prediction method based on complete subset averaging (CSA) for quantile regressions. All models under consideration are potentially misspecified, and the dimension of regressors goes to infinity as the sample size increases. Since we average over the complete subsets, the number of models is much larger than the usual model averaging method which adopts sophisticated weighting schemes. We propose to use an equal weight but select the proper size of the complete subset based on the leave-one-out cross-validation method. Building upon the theory of Lu and Su (2015, Journal of Econometrics 188, 40–58), we investigate the large sample properties of CSA and show the asymptotic optimality in the sense of Li (1987, Annals of Statistics 15, 958–975) We check the finite sample performance via Monte Carlo simulations and empirical applications.

Via generalized interval arithmetic, we propose a Generalized Interval Arithmetic Center and Range (GIA-CR) model for random intervals, where parameters in the model satisfy linear inequality constraints. We construct a constrained estimator of the parameter vector and develop asymptotically uniformly valid tests for linear equality constraints on the parameters in the model. We conduct a simulation study to examine the finite sample performance of our estimator and tests. Furthermore, we propose a coefficient of determination for the GIA-CR model. As a separate contribution, we establish the asymptotic distribution of the constrained estimator in Blanco-Fernández (2015, Multiple Set Arithmetic-Based Linear Regression Models for Interval-Valued Variables) in which the parameters satisfy an increasing number of random inequality constraints.

This paper derives asymptotic risk (expected loss) results for shrinkage estimators with multidimensional regularization in high-dimensional settings. We introduce a class of multidimensional shrinkage estimators (MuSEs), which includes the elastic net, and show that—as the number of parameters to estimate grows—the empirical loss converges to the oracle-optimal risk. This result holds when the regularization parameters are estimated empirically via cross-validation or Stein’s unbiased risk estimate. To help guide applied researchers in their choice of estimator, we compare the empirical Bayes risk of the lasso, ridge, and elastic net in a spike and normal setting. Of the three estimators, we find that the elastic net performs best when the data are moderately sparse and the lasso performs best when the data are highly sparse. Our analysis suggests that applied researchers who are unsure about the level of sparsity in their data might benefit from using MuSEs such as the elastic net. We exploit these insights to propose a new estimator, the cubic net, and demonstrate through simulations that it outperforms the three other estimators for any sparsity level.

We revisit in-sample asymptotic analysis extensively used in the realized volatility literature. We show that there are gains to be made in estimating current realized volatility from considering realizations in prior periods. The weighting schemes also relate to Kalman-Bucy filters, although our approach is non-Gaussian and model-free. We derive theoretical results for a broad class of processes pertaining to volatility, higher moments, and leverage. The paper also contains a Monte Carlo simulation study showing the benefits of across-sample combinations.

This article concerns the tail probabilities of a light-tailed Markov-modulated Lévy process stopped at a state-dependent Poisson rate. The tails are shown to decay exponentially at rates given by the unique positive and negative roots of the spectral abscissa of a certain matrix-valued function. We illustrate the use of our results with an application to the stationary distribution of wealth in a simple economic model in which agents with constant absolute risk aversion are subject to random mortality and income fluctuation.

This paper shows that if the errors in a multiple regression model are heavy-tailed, the ordinary least squares (OLS) estimators for the regression coefficients are tail-dependent. The tail dependence arises, because the OLS estimators are stochastic linear combinations of heavy-tailed random variables. Moreover, tail dependence also exists between the fitted sum of squares (FSS) and the residual sum of squares (RSS), because they are stochastic quadratic combinations of heavy-tailed random variables.

In this paper, we propose two bootstrap procedures, namely parametric and block bootstrap, to approximate the finite sample distribution of change-point estimators for piecewise stationary time series. The bootstrap procedures are then used to develop a generalized likelihood ratio scan method (GLRSM) for multiple change-point inference in piecewise stationary time series, which estimates the number and locations of change-points and provides a confidence interval for each change-point. The computational complexity of using GLRSM for multiple change-point detection is as low as $O(n(\log n)^{3})$ for a series of length n. Extensive simulation studies are provided to demonstrate the effectiveness of the proposed methodology under different scenarios. Applications to financial time series are also illustrated.

Many financial time series have varying structures at different quantile levels, and also exhibit the phenomenon of conditional heteroskedasticity at the same time. However, there is presently no time series model that accommodates both of these features. This paper fills the gap by proposing a novel conditional heteroskedastic model called “quantile double autoregression”. The strict stationarity of the new model is derived, and self-weighted conditional quantile estimation is suggested. Two promising properties of the original double autoregressive model are shown to be preserved. Based on the quantile autocorrelation function and self-weighting concept, three portmanteau tests are constructed to check the adequacy of the fitted conditional quantiles. The finite sample performance of the proposed inferential tools is examined by simulation studies, and the need for use of the new model is further demonstrated by analyzing the S&P500 Index.

We use identification robust tests to show that difference (Dif), level (Lev), and nonlinear (NL) moment conditions, as proposed by Arellano and Bond (1991, Review of Economic Studies 58, 277–297), Ahn and Schmidt (1995, Journal of Econometrics 68, 5–27), Arellano and Bover (1995, Journal of Econometrics 68, 29–51), and Blundell and Bond (1998, Journal of Econometrics 87, 115–143) for the linear dynamic panel data model, do not separately identify the autoregressive parameter when its true value is close to one and the variance of the initial observations is large. We prove that combinations of these moment conditions, however, do so when there are more than three time series observations. This identification then solely results from a set of, so-called, robust moment conditions. These robust moments are spanned by the combined Dif, Lev, and NL moment conditions and only depend on differenced data. We show that, when only the robust moments contain identifying information on the autoregressive parameter, the discriminatory power of the Kleibergen (2005, Econometrica 73, 1103–1124) Lagrange multiplier (KLM) test using the combined moments is identical to the largest rejection frequencies that can be obtained from solely using the robust moments. This shows that the KLM test implicitly uses the robust moments when only they contain information on the autoregressive parameter.