This paper considers data quality issues for the analysis of consumption inequality exploiting two complementary datasets from the Consumer Expenditure Survey for the United States. The Interview sample follows survey households over four calendar quarters and consists of retrospectively...

This chapter reviews recent advances in nonparametric and semiparametric estimation, with an emphasis on applicability to empirical research and on resolving issues that arise in implementation. It considers techniques for estimating densities, conditional mean functions, derivatives of...

The matching method for treatment evaluation does not balance selective unobserved differences between treated and non-treated. We derive a simple correction term if there is an instrument that shifts the treatment probability to zero in specific cases. Policies with eligibility restrictions,...

Semiparametric methods are developed to estimate the bias that arises from using nonexperimental comparison groups to evaluate social programs and to test the identifying assumptions that justify matching, selection models and the method of difference in differences. Using data from an...

　　 We consider the problem of the bandwidth selection for the sharp regression discontinuity (RD) estimator. The sharp RD estimator requires to estimate two conditional mean functions on the left and the right of the cut-off point nonparametrically. We propose to choose two...

　　 We consider the problem of choosing two bandwidths simultaneously for estimating the difference of two functions at given points. When the asymptotic approximation of the mean squared error (AMSE) criterion is used, we show that minimization problem is not well-defined when the...