<p><p><p>We model attitudes as latent variables that induce stochastic dominance relations in (item) responses. Observable characteristics that affect attitudes can be incorporated into the analysis to improve the measurement of the attitudes; the measurements are posterior distributions that condition...</p></p></p>

A new methodology that estimates attitudes semiparametrically and estimates actions nonparametrically, as a function of the resulting attitudinal measures, is used to examine the behavioral effects of ѣultural' and ѥconomic' preferences in the Presidential elections of 1984 and 1992. The...

This paper (i) formalizes conditions under which a population distribution of categorical responses to attitudinal questions (Ñ©temsÒ© has a scale representation; (ii) develops tests for whether a particular sample of item responses is consistent with a scale representation; (iii) develops...

In the last decade a growing body of research has studied inference on partially identified parameters (e.g., Manski, 1990, 2003). In many cases where the parameter of interest is realvalued, the identification region is an interval whose lower and upper bounds may be estimated from sample data....

We develop and analyze a tractable empirical model for strategic network formation that can be estimated with data from a single network at a single point in time. We model the network formation as a sequential process where in each period a single randomly selected pair of agents has the...

<p>We investigate the problem of optimal choice of the smoothing parameter (bandwidth) for the regression discontinuity estimator. We focus on estimation by local linear regression, which was shown to be rate optimal (Porter, 2003). We derive the optimal bandwidth. This optimal bandwidth depends on...</p>

Many empirical questions in economics and other social sciences depend on causal effects of programs or policies. In the last two decades much research has been done on the econometric and statistical analysis of the effects of such programs or treatments. This recent theoretical literature has...