I develop a dynamic stochastic model of individual choices about health insurance, exercise, smoking, alcohol consumption and medical treatment. The primary objective is to estimate the parameters of the model to conduct counter-factual health policy experiments. The model is estimated through...

The main computational tool for solving SUR or simultaneous equations models is the generalized QR decomposition (GQRD) of an exogenous matrix A and the Cholesky factorization of a dispersion matrix C. Initially the GQRD computes the QRD of A and then the RQD of QC, where Q is an orthogonal...

This paper proposes a worst-case approach for estimating econometric models containing unobservable variables. Worst-case estimators are robust against the averse effects of unobservables and, unlike the classical literature, there are no assumptions made about the statistical nature of the...

We investigate identifiability issues in DSGE models and their consequences for parameter estimation and model evaluation when the objective function measures the distance between estimated and model impulse responses. We show that observational equivalence, partial and weak identification...

Fully specified DSGE models are increasingly successful in explaining observed macroeconomic data. Thinking about the specification of a certain equation in a DSGE approach has the drawback of imposing many implicit priors on the specification of the remaining equations. Mis-specifications in...

We measure the economic capital stock of money implied by the Divisia monetary aggregate service flow, in a manner consistent with asset pricing theory. Based on Barnett’s [4] definition of the economic stock of money, we estimate the expected discounted flow of expenditure on the...

This paper presents an attempt to solve and estimate a structural dynamic non-linear rational expectation model. The main contribution of this paper is to explore the Smolyak operator for numerical approximation and integration in a generic model class which do not suffer exponentially but only...

A high degree of cyclical synchronization between the new EU member states (NMS) from Central and Eastern Europe and the euro area is generally seen as a prerequisite for successful EMU enlargement. We establish stylized facts on economic linkages between NMS and the euro area using dynamic...