This paper considers data quality issues for the analysis of consumption inequality exploiting two complementary datasets from the Consumer Expenditure Survey for the United States. The Interview sample follows survey households over four calendar quarters and consists of retrospectively...

We present a simple way to estimate the effects of changes in a vector of observable variables X on a limited dependent variable Y when Y is a general nonseparable function of X and unobservables. We treat models in which Y is censored from above or below or potentially from both. The basic idea...

This paper develops and applies semiparametric econometric methods to estimate the form of selection bias that arises from using nonexperimental comparison groups to evaluate social programs and to test the identifying assumptions that justify three widely-used classes of estimators and our...

This paper specifies a general set of conditions under which the impacts of a policy can be identified using data generated under a different policy regime. We show that some of the policy impacts can be identified under relatively weak conditions on the data and structure of a model. Based on...

We consider the problem of the bandwidth selection for the sharp regression discontinuity (RD) estimator. The sharp RD estimator requires to estimate two conditional mean functions on the left and the right of the cut-off point nonparametrically. We propose to choose two bandwidths, one for each...

We consider the problem of choosing two bandwidths simultaneously for estimating the difference of two functions at given points. When the asymptotic approximation of the mean squared error (AMSE) criterion is used, we show that minimization problem is not well-defined when the sign of the...