In this paper, stochastic production frontier models are estimated with IAB establishment data from waves 2002 and 2003 to analyze productivity and inefficiency. The data suffer from nonresponse in the most important variables (output, capital and labor) leading to the loss of 25 % of the...

This paper discusses methodological problems of standard errors and treatment effects. First, heteroskedasticity- and cluster-robust estimates are considered as well as problems with Bernoulli distributed regressors, outliers and partially identified parameters. Second, procedures to determine...

This paper makes three contributions to the literature on the effects of collective bargaining on the performance of German establishments. We include the analysis of firms' efficiency and we model productivity and efficiency simultaneously. Confronted with 25 % observations with missing values,...

In this paper, stochastic production frontier models are estimated with IAB establishment data from waves 2002 and 2003 to find important determinants of productivity and ineffciency. The data suffer from nonresponse in the most important variables (output, capital and labor) leading to the loss...

Two recent failures of the United States intelligence system have led to thecreation of high-level investigative commissions. The failure to prevent theterrorist attacks of 9/11 prompted the creation of the 9/11 Commission, andthe mistaken belief that Saddam Hussein had retained weapons of...

Fund-of-funds (FoF) managers face the task of selecting a (relatively) small number ofhedge funds from a large universe of candidate funds. We analyse whether such a selectioncan be successfully achieved by looking at the track records of the available funds alone,using advanced statistical...

We use dynamic panel analysis to examine whether credit rating agencies achieve what they claim to achieve, namely, look into the future when assigning their ratings. We find that Moody's ratings help predict individual financial ratios over a horizon of up to five years. Ratings also predict a...