Many statistical applications require the forecast of a random variable of interest over several periods into the future. The sequence of individual forecasts, one period at a time, is called a path forecast, where the term path refers to the sequence of individual future realizations of the...

I expose the risk of false discoveries in the context of multiple treatment effects. A false discovery is a nonexistent effect that is falsely labeled as statistically significant by its individual t-value. Labeling nonexistent effects as statistically significant has wide-ranging academic and...

As the first, substantive contribution, this paper revisits the effectiveness of two widely used public sponsored training programs, the first one focusing on intensive occupational training and the second one on short-term activation and job entry. We use an exceptionally rich administrative...

This paper explores semi-monotonicity constraints in the distribution of potential outcomes, first, conditional on an instrument, and second, in terms of the response function. The imposed assumptions are strictly weaker than traditional instrumental variables assumptions and can be gainfully...

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

Consider the problem of testing s hypotheses simultaneously. In order to deal with the multiplicity problem, the classical approach is to restrict attention to procedures that control the familywise error rate (FWE). Typically, it is known how to construct tests of the individual hypotheses, and...

In 1997, the Swiss government introduced active labor market programs on a large scale to improve the job chances of unemployed workers. This paper evaluates the effect of these programs on the duration of unemployment. Our evaluation methodology allows for selectivity affecting the inflow into...

Applied researchers often test for the difference of the Sharpe ratios of two investment strategies. A very popular tool to this end is the test of Jobson and Korkie (1981), which has been corrected by Memmel (2003). Unfortunately, this test is not valid when returns have tails heavier than the...

This paper considers the problem of testing a finite number of moment inequalities. We propose a two-step approach. In the first step, a confidence region for the moments is constructed. In the second step, this set is used to provide information about which moments are “negative.” A...

The purpose of this paper is to analyze the optimal scale of local jurisdictions (cantons) in Switzerland applying Data Envelopment Analysis (DEA) to the years 2000 to 2004. Aggregate output performance indicators for four local government activities (administration, education, health, and...