This dissertation consists of three essays on modeling and parameter estimation for covariance non-stationary processes. The first essay considers the non-linear deformation of time scale for G(lambda)-stationary processes developed by Jiang, Gray and Woodward [2006]. After the appropriate...

In the study of finance, likelihood based or moment based methods are frequently used to estimate parameters for various kinds of models given the sampled return data. While the former method is not robust, the latter one suffers from loss of efficiency and high noise-to-signal ratio in the...

We propose to model endogeneity bias using prior distributions of moment conditions. The estimator can be obtained both as a method-of-moments estimator and in a Ridge penalized regression framework. We show the estimator's relation to a Bayesian estimator.

An elliptical copula model is a distribution function whose copula is that of an elliptical distri- bution. The tail dependence function in such a bivariate model has a parametric representation with two parameters: a tail parameter and a correlation parameter. The correlation parameter can be...

AMS 2000 subject classifications: 60G70, 62H12, 62H15, 62F05, 62F12, 62F25.

We adopt a moment based approach to investigate how individual producers' optimize input usage, in particular irrigation water, taking into account their risk preferences. We rely on a panel data of 122,800 Italian farms, spread over 1981 to 2003. We capture both variation over farms and over...

We present a control problem for an electrical vehicle. Its motor can be operated in two discrete modes, leading either to acceleration and energy consumption, or to a recharging of the battery. Mathematically, this leads to a mixed-integer optimal control problem (MIOCP) with a discrete...

This paper introduces a general method to convert a model defined by moment conditions involving both observed and unobserved variables into equivalent moment conditions involving only observable variables. This task can be accomplished without introducing infinite-dimensional nuisance...

We propose to model endogeneity bias using prior distributions of moment conditions. The estimator can be obtained both as a method-of-moments estimator and in a Ridge penalized regression framework. We show the estimator’s relation to a Bayesian estimator.

A dynamic linear rational equilibrium model in the tradition of Alonso, Rosen and Roback is consistent with many outstanding stylized facts of housing markets. These include: (a) that the markets are local in nature; (b) that construction persistence is fully compatible with mean reversion in...