This paper applies semiparametric regression models using penalized splines to investigate the profile of well-being over the life span. Splines have the advantage that they do not require a priori assumptions about the form of the curve. Using data from the British Household Panel Survey (BHPS)...

In response to increasing health expenditures and a high number of physician visits, the German government introduced a copayment for ambulatory care in 2004 for individuals with statutory health insurance (SHI). Because persons with private insurance were exempt from the copayments, this health...

This paper examines the degree of persistence in the volatility of financial time series using a Long Memory Stochastic Volatility (LMSV) model. Specifically, it employs a Gaussian semiparametric (or local Whittle) estimator of the memory parameter, based on the frequency domain, proposed by...

This paper examines the Taylor rule in five emerging economies, namely Indonesia, Israel, South Korea, Thailand, and Turkey. In particular, it investigates whether monetary policy in these countries can be more accurately described by (i) an augmented rule including the exchange rate, as well as...

Motivated by Manski and Tamer (2002) and especially their partial identification analysis of the regression model where one covariate is only interval-measured, we present two extensions. Manski and Tamer (2002) propose two estimation approaches in this context, focussing on general results. The...

Subsidies are considered important means to facilitate the provision of public transit, yet the empirical evidence implies that they can have harming effects on costs and possibly also on operators' performance. This paper examines the impacts of deficit-balancing subsidies on the cost...

This paper introduces a statistical technique, Support Vector Machines (SVM), which is considered by the Deutsche Bundesbank as an alternative for company rating. A special attention is paid to the features of the SVM which provide a higher accuracy of company classification into solvent and...

Replication studies are considered a hallmark of good scientific practice. Yet they are treated among researchers as an ideal to be professed but not practiced. To provide incentives and favorable boundary conditions for replication practice, the main stakeholders need to be aware of what drives...

The present paper tests for the existence of multicointegration between real per capita private consumption expenditure and real per capita disposable personal income in the USA. In doing so, we exploit the fact that the flows of disposable income and consumption expenditure on the one hand, and...

The techniques of simple random sampling are seldom appropriate in the empirical analysis of income distributions. Various types of weighting schemes are usually required either from the point of view of welfare-economic considerations (the mapping of household/family distributions into...