When people decide about saving and consumption across the various periods of their life time they take into account their life expectancy when comparing present and future needs and resources for satisfying them. The experimental design, applied at two sites (Humboldt-University at Berlin and...

This paper is the attempt to summarize the state of art in additive and generalized additive models (GAM). The emphasis is on approaches and numerical procedures which have emerged since the monograph of Hastie and Tibshirani (1990) although reconsidering certain aspects of their work. Apart...

A procedure for testing equality across nonparametric regressions is proposed. The procedure allows for any dimension of the explanatory variables and for any number of subsamples. We consider the case of random explanatory variables and allow the designs of the regressors and the number of...

To assess the predictive content of the interest rate term spread for future economic growth, we distinguish short-run from long-run predictability by using two different approaches. First, following Dufour and Renault (1998) a test procedure is proposed to test for causality at different...

We develop inference tools in a semiparametric regression model with missing response data. A semiparametric regression imputation estimator and an empirical likelihood based one for the mean of the response variable are defined. Both the estimators are proved to be asymptotically normal, with...

This article investigates whether decision makers intuitively optimize close to the normative prediction in entrepreneurial decision situations where their time must be allocated between a wage job and a newly formed venture. We offer an analytical model based on maximizing expected utility, and...

Appraisals are needed for decision-making and for performance evaluation. Knowledge on the accuracy of valuation methods is of general interest for banks and investors. We assess the accuracy of the German Regulation on Valuation with monthly data on appraisals and prices for commercial...

Additive modelling has been widely used in nonparametric regression to circumvent the "curse of dimensionality", by reducing the problem of estimating a multivariate regression function to the estimation of its univariate components. Estimation of these univariate functions, however, can suffer...