This paper examines the impact of the Working Families Tax Credit (WFTC) on employment retention and advancement. The WFTC, which replaced Family Credit in October 1999, supplemented earnings of low paid workers living in low income families. It was designed to increase the financial incentive...

In April 2002 Jobcentre Plus started to operate in the UK bringing together the service of the Benefits Agency and the Employment Service. Offering a fully integrated benefit claiming and work placement/job-seeking service for people of working age this new organisation aims to strengthen the...

Local linear fitting is a popular nonparametric method in nonlinear statistical and econometric modelling. Lu and Linton (2007) established the point wise asymptotic distribution (central limit theorem) for the local linear estimator of nonparametric regression function under the condition of...

Efficient semiparametric and parametric estimates are developed for a spatial autoregressive model, containing nonstochastic explanatory variables and innovations suspected to be non-normal. The main stress is on the case of distribution of unknown, nonparametric, form, where series...

We propose a smoothed least squares estimator of the parameters of a threshold regression model. Our model generalizes that considered in Hansen (2000) to allow the thresholding to depend on a linear index of observed regressors, thus allowing discrete variables to enter. We also do not assume...

The semiparametric local Whittle or Gaussian estimate of the long memory parameter is known to have especially nice limiting distributional properties, being asymptotically normal with a limiting variance that is completely known. However in moderate samples the normal approximation may not be...

We propose a modification of kernel time series regression estimators that improves efficiency when the innovation process is autocorrelated. The procedure is based on a pre-whitening transformation of the dependent variable that has to be estimated from the data. We establish the asymptotic...

We show that it is possible to adapt to nonparametric disturbance auto-correlation in time series regression in the presence of long memory in both regressors and disturbances by using a smoothed nonparametric spectrum estimate in frequency-domain generalized least squares. When the collective...

We consider a parametric spectral density with power-law behaviour about a fractional pole at the unknown frequency w. The case of unknown w, especially w = 0, is standard in the long memory literature. When w is unknown, asymptotic distribution theory for estimates of parameters, including the...

We provide a proof of the consistency and asymptotic normality of the estimator suggested by Heckman (1990) for the intercept of a semiparametrically estimated sample selection model. The estimator is based on 'identification at infinity' which leads to non-standard convergence rate. Andrews and...