This paper examines robust estimators of core inflation for Belgian historical CPI data, and the euro area Harmonised indices of Consumer Prices.

The optimal minimum distance (OMD) estimator for models of covariance structure is asymptotically efficient but has much worse finite-sample properties than does the equally-weighted minimum distance (EWMD) estimator. This paper shows how the bootstrap can be used to improve the finite-sample...

Extremum estimation is typically an ad hoc semi-parametric estimation procedure which is only justified on the basis of the asymptotic properties of the estimators. For a fixed finite data set, consider a large number of investigations using different extremum estimators to estimate the same...

In this paper we examine educational data whch has a cross-classified structure. A cross-classified value-added multilevel model is proposed for these data and the problem of estimation are discussed in relation to the probllem of an endogenous regressor.