The paper studies the commutative and causality relationship between economic openness and indigenous factors. The construction of the Openness Index and the Indigenous Index provides a measure on the extent of openness and indigenous development among world economies. The two indices are used...

This paper employs a fully nonparametric stochastic frontier model with time and individual effects to study technical efficiency in China's post-reform economy. The panel data cover China's thirty provinces for the period of 1985–2008. The empirical results show that the average output...

This article uses a nonparametric varying coefficient panel data model to study the convergence of real GDP per capita among 120 world economies for the sample period of 1980-2010. The estimates show that the indirect contribution of initial income via the control variables is important. The...

In this paper, we consider estimation of discrete response models exhibiting conditional heteroskedasticity of a multiplicative form, where the latent error term is assumed to be the product of an unknown scale function and a homoskedastic error term. It is first shown that for estimation of the...

We propose an estimation procedure for a semiparametric panel data censored regression model in which the error terms may be subject to general forms of nonstationarity. Specifically, we allow for heteroskedasticity over time and a time varying factor load on the individual specific effect....

Powell's (1984, Journal of Econometrics 25, 303}325) censored least absolute deviations(CLAD) estimator for the censored linear regression model has been regarded asa desirable alternative to maximum likelihood estimation methods due to its robustnessto conditional heteroskedasticity and...

Five National Fire Danger Rating System indices (including the Ignition Component, Energy Release Component, Burning Index, Spread Component, and the Keetch-Byram Drought Index) and the Fosberg Fire Weather Index are used to characterise US fire danger. These fire danger indices and input...