An expected utility based cost-benefit analysis is in general fragile to its distributional assumptions. We derive necessary and sufficient conditions on the utility function of the expected utility model to avoid this. The conditions ensure that expected (marginal) utility remains finite also...

In searching for an appropriate utility function in the expected utility framework, we formulate four properties that we want the utility function to satisfy. We conduct a search for such a function, and we identify Pareto utility as a function satisfying all four desired properties. Pareto...

In the practice of program evaluation, choosing the covariates and the functional form of the propensity score is an important choice for estimating treatment effects. This paper proposes data-driven model selection and model averaging procedures that address this issue for the propensity score...

Many regression models have two dimensions, say time (<italic>t</italic> = 1,…,<italic>T</italic>) and households (<italic>i</italic> = 1,…,<italic>N</italic>), as in panel data, error components, or spatial econometrics. In estimating such models we need to specify the structure of the error variance matrix <italic>Ω</italic>, which is of dimension <italic>T N</italic> × <italic>T N</italic>. If <italic>T N</italic> is...

<Para ID="Par2">F22, Q54 </AbstractSection> Copyright Backhaus et al.; licensee Springer. 2015