A variety of parametric and semiparametric models produce qualitatively similar estimates of government policies’ effects on income distribution and welfare (as measured by the Gini, standard deviation of logarithms, relative mean deviation, coefficient of variation, and various Atkinson...

We use a nonlinear, nonparametric method to forecast the unemployment rates. We compare these forecasts to several linear and nonlinear parametric methods based on the work of Montgomery et al. (1998) and Carruth et al. (1998). Our main result is that, due to the nonlin-earity in the data...

Using a maximum entropy technique, we estimate the market shares of each firm in an industry using the available government summary statistics such as the four-firm concentration ratio (C4) and the Herfindahl-Hirschmann Index (HHI). We show that our technique is very effective in estimating the...

This paper presents a new generalized maximum entropy (GME) approach to estimation of sample-selection models with small data sets, such as are found in many empirical agricultural economic analysis. For small samples, the GME approach produces more stable estimates and has smaller mean square...

Generalized maximum entropy may be used to estimate mixed strategies subject to restrictions from game theory. This method avoids distributional assumptions and is consistent and efficient. We use this method to estimate the mixed strategies of duopolistic airlines.

The minimum wage, unlike most government transfer programs, lowered welfare in the 1980s and 1990s as measured by all commonly used welfare or inequality measures, including various Atkinson indexes, the Gini index, standard deviation of logarithms, and others. The effects of most government...

A semiparametric estimator for evaluating the parameters of data generated under a sample selection process is developed. This estimator is based on the generalized maximum entropy estimator and performs well for small and ill-posed samples. Theoretical and sampling comparisons with parametric...