The validity of family background variables instrumenting education in income regressions has been much criticized. In this paper, we use data of the 2004 German Socio-Economic Panel and Bayesian analysis in order to analyze to what degree violations of the strong validity assumption affect the...

This discussion paper was published in the <I> Economics of Education Review</I> (2012). Vol. 31(5), 515-523.<P> The validity of family background variables instrumenting education in income regressions has been much criticized. In this paper, we use data of the 2004 German Socio-Economic Panel and...</p></i>

This paper presents the R-package <B>MitISEM</B> (mixture of <I>t</I> by importance sampling weighted expectation maximization) which provides an automatic and flexible two-stage method to approximate a non-elliptical target density kernel -- typically a posterior density kernel -- using an adaptive mixture...</i></b>

We investigate the direct connection between the uncertainty related to estimated stable ratios of stock prices and risk and return of two pairs trading strategies: a conditional statistical arbitrage method and an implicit arbitrage one. A simulation-based Bayesian procedure is introduced for...

Accurate prediction of risk measures such as Value at Risk (VaR) and Expected Shortfall (ES) requires precise estimation of the tail of the predictive distribution. Two novel concepts are introduced that offer a specific focus on this part of the predictive density: the censored posterior, a...

This discussion paper resulted in an article in <I>Computational Statistics & Data Analysis</I> (2012). Vol. 56(11), 3398-3414.<p> Strategic choices for efficient and accurate evaluation of marginal likelihoods by means of Monte Carlo simulation methods are studied for the case of highly non-elliptical...</p></i>

Highly non-elliptical posterior distributions may occur in several econometric models, in particular, when the likelihood information is allowed to dominate and data information is weak. We explain the issue of highly non-elliptical posteriors in a model for the effect of education on income...

This paper presents the R package MitISEM, which provides an automatic and flexible method to approximate a non-elliptical target density using adaptive mixtures of Student-t densities, where only a kernel of the target density is required. The approximation can be used as a candidate density in...

This discussion paper resulted in a publication in <I>Econometric Reviews</I>. Vol. 33(1-4), 3-35.<P> We discuss Bayesian inferential procedures within the family of instrumental variables regression models and focus on two issues: existence conditions for posterior moments of the parameters of interest...</p></i>

Important choices for efficient and accurate evaluation of marginal likelihoods by means of Monte Carlo simulation methods are studied for the case of highly non-elliptical posterior distributions. We focus on the situation where one makes use of importance sampling or the independence chain...