We provide an in-depth analysis of the theoretical and statistical properties of the Hansen-Jagannathan (HJ) distance that incorporates a no-arbitrage constraint. We show that for stochastic discount factors (SDF) that are spanned by the returns on the test assets, testing the equality of HJ...

This paper studies some seemingly anomalous results that arise in possibly misspecified and unidentified linear asset-pricing models estimated by maximum likelihood and one-step generalized method of moments (GMM). Strikingly, when useless factors (that is, factors that are independent of the...

We show that in misspecified models with useless factors (for example, factors that are independent of the returns on the test assets), the standard inference procedures tend to erroneously conclude, with high probability, that these irrelevant factors are priced and the restrictions of the...

Identification in most sample selection models depends on the independence of the regressors and the error terms conditional on the selection probability. All quantile and mean functions are parallel in these models; this implies that quantile estimators cannot reveal any - per assumption...

This paper considers the problem of testing a finite number of moment inequalities. We propose a two-step approach. In the first step, a confidence region for the moments is constructed. In the second step, this set is used to provide information about which moments are "negative." A...

Linear regression models form the cornerstone of applied research in economics and other scientific disciplines. When conditional heteroskedasticity is present, or at least suspected, the practice of reweighting the data has long been abandoned in favor of estimating model parameters by ordinary...

This paper derives explicit expressions for the asymptotic variances of the maximum likelihood and continuously updated GMM estimators under potentially misspecified models. The proposed misspecification-robust variance estimators allow the researcher to conduct valid inference on the model...

Conditional heteroskedasticity can be exploited to identify the structural vector autoregressions (SVAR) but the implications for inference on structural impulse responses have not been investigated in detail yet. We consider the conditionally heteroskedastic SVAR-GARCH model and propose a...

This paper proposes a post-model selection inference procedure, called targeted undersmoothing, designed to construct uniformly valid confidence sets for functionals of sparse high-dimensional models, including dense functionals that may depend on many or all elements of the high-dimensional...

This paper is concerned with statistical inference and model evaluation in possibly misspecified and unidentified linear asset-pricing models estimated by maximum likelihood and one-step generalized method of moments. Strikingly, when spurious factors (that is, factors that are uncorrelated with...