A dynamic Tobit model with Time-varying parameters is proposed for the daily reaction function of the Open Market Desk of the US Federal Reserve. Such a model offers a more realistic depiction of the Desk's behavior than those of past contributions in the literature as it allows for both...

This paper considers two models to deal with an outcome variable that contains a large fraction of zeros, such as individual expenditures on health care: a sample-selection model and a two-part model. The sample-selection model uses two possibly correlated processes to determine the outcome: a...

The performance of Monte Carlo integration methods like importance-sampling or Markov-Chain Monte-Carlo procedures depends greatly on the choice of the importance- or candidate-density. Such a density must typically be "close" to the target density to yield numerically accurate results with...

This paper describes and analyses the use of the Filtered Historical Simulation algorithm in pricing spread options. Spread options are contracts whose payoff depends on the price difference (spread) between two or more underlying assets at a future date. Such kind of options are written in the...

Computing power now allows empirical researchers to use intensive computing estimation techniques with nonlinear panel-data models. Maximum Likelihood estimation is often cumbersome, if not analytically intractable, when dealing with such models. Even the simple calculation of the likelihood...

Advances in computing power allow the empirical researcher to use intensive computional techniques to solve and estimate nonlinear panel-data models, specifically those arising from nonlinear panel data such as Probit and Tobit models. In these cases, maximum-likelihood estimation can be...