This paper develops and applies a novel test of the Holt, et al.(1961) linear quadratic inventory model. It is shown that a central property of the model is that a certain weighted sum of variances and covariances of production, sales and inventories must be nonnegative. The weights are the...

Econometric aspects of recent research on inventory models are surveyed. The discussion emphasizes issues relevant to instrumental variables estimation of a first order condition of the Holt et al. (1960) linear quadratic inventory model, including choice of instruments, covariance matrix...

Does holding schools accountable for student performance cause good teachers to leave low-performing schools? Using data from New York City, which assigns accountability grades to schools based on student achievement, I perform a regression discontinuity analysis and find evidence of the...

This paper estimates cost functions for day care centers in Massachusetts. The production technology assumed is the generalized homothetic Cobb-Douglas production function. The cost function dual to this production function is estimated separately for profit-making (P1Os) and not-for-profit...

The main purpose of this paper is to present estimates of production and cost functions obtained from using a time-series, cross-section data set pertaining to Israeli industry, We include a detailed list of heterogeneity controls in the specifications which substantially enhances the...

Using a newly compiled data set, this paper provides insights into the characteristics of the child care industry. First, there is no difference in average quality of the services produced between nonprofit and for-profit centers. This indicates that nonprofit status cannot be taken as a signal...

Using a newly compiled data set, this paper estimates multi- product translog cost functions for 399 child care centers from California, Colorado, Connecticut, and North Carolina. Quality of child care is controlled by a quality index, which has been shown to be positively related to child...

We propose a simple method for estimating cost functions in the presence of endogenous and unobserved quality. The theory of production, the equilibrium conditions implied by optimizing behavior, and exogenous influences on product demand are used to identify the model. An important advantage of...

This paper focuses on how changes in the economic and regulatory environment have affected production costs and product characteristics in the automobile industry. We estimate cost functions characteristics. Then we examine how this cost surface has changed over time and how these changes relate...

We use data from a sample of day care centers to estimate the relationships between cost and the quality of the child care service provided, and between revenue and quality. We use a measure of child care quality derived from an instrument designed by developmental psychologists. This measure of...