In this talk, I introduce some improved programs for nonparametric smoothing that originally were written in a very simple manner. These updated ado-files are simple too, but they are more versatile and more “Stata-like” than the original versions. The ado-files include, for density traces,...

The Gini coefficient is widely used to measure inequality in the distribution of income, consumption, and other welfare proxies. Decomposing this measure can help you understand the determinants of inequality. In this presentation, I will use income data from Mexico to illustrate a user-written...

Reproducible research is one of many names for the same concept: writing one report document that contains both the report and the commands from a statistical or programming language needed to produce the results and graphics contained in the report. It is called reproducible research because...

I discuss two applications of the vec commands in this presentation. First, I use the cointegrating VAR approach discussed in Garrat et al. (2006, Global and National Macroeconometric Modelling: A Long-run Structural Approach) to fit a vector-error correction model. In contrast with the...

Ordered categorical responses can be analyzed with different kinds of logistic regression models, the most popular being the cumulative logit or proportional odds model. Alternatively, ordinal probit models can be specified. When the data have a nested structure, with repeated observations for...

Survey data comes often as a plain table containing cryptic variable names, numbers, and letters. To make sense of the data, the researcher is given a questionnaire or a code book that contains a list of variable names, their description, and an interpretation of the values (either a number or a...

It seems that the user-written dfl command has a problem when using micro-unit data without weighting, because its estimates of densities integrate to more than one. This situation produces densities that need to be corrected before a proper empirical analysis can be carried out. In this...

In this presentation, I will discuss Stata’s capability to implement the entire SVAR methodology with nonstationary series. In the presence of cointegration, the structuralization of a VAR model takes place at two distinct stages: the first is the identification of the long-run equilibrium...

In this presentation, I will investigate the determinants of property tax collection in Mexico. The tax is paid by all owners of land and dwellings in Mexico for the right of holding their properties, and is collected and managed by municipal authorities at the local level. This type of tax has...

Surveys such as the Encuesta Nacional de Ingresos y Gastos de los Hogares (ENIGH, or the National Survey of Household Income and Expenditure) offer many opportunities for the design, estimation, and testing of applied models in social science. The ENIGH is also a valuable source of case studies...