The Basel II framework strictly defines the conditions under which financial institutions are authorized to accept real estate as collateral in order to decrease their credit risk. A widely used concept for its valuation is the hedonic approach. It assumes, that a property can be characterized...

This paper discusses random intercept selection within the context of semiparametric regression models with structured additive predictor (STAR). STAR models can deal simultaneously with nonlinear covariate effects and time trends, unit- or cluster-specific heterogeneity, spatial heterogeneity...