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...

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...

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...

Recent advances in the econometric modelling of count data have often been based on the generalized method of moments (GMM). However, the two-step GMM procedure may perform poorly in small samples, and several empirical likelihood-based estimators have been suggested alternatively. In this paper...

The purpose of this paper is twofold. First, it measures the efficiency in the provision of public goods by local jurisdictions applying Data Envelopment Analysis (DEA). Second, it relates ef- ficiency scores to a fiscal equalization scheme designed to mitigate the negative consequences of...

This paper deals with the identification of treatment effects when the outcome variable is ordered. If outcomes are measured ordinally, previously developed methods to investigate the impact of an endogenous binary regressor on average outcomes cannot be applied as the expectation of an ordered...

The credibility of standard instrumental variables assumptions is often under dispute. This paper imposes weak monotonicity in order to gain information on counterfactual outcomes, but avoids independence or exclusion restrictions. The outcome process is assumed to be sequentially ordered,...