This paper considers nonparametric identification and estimation of the regression function when a covariate is mismeasured. The measurement error need not be classical. Employing the small measurement error approximation, we establish nonparametric identification under weak and...

This paper proposes a powerful alternative to the t-test of the null hypothesis that a coefficient in linear regression is equal to zero when a regressor is mismeasured. We assume there are two contaminated measurements of the regressor of interest. We allow the two measurement errors to be...

This paper considers data quality issues for the analysis of consumption inequality exploiting two complementary datasets from the Consumer Expenditure Survey for the United States. The Interview sample follows survey households over four calendar quarters and consists of retrospectively asked...

The paper reports an experimental study based on a variant of the popular Chinos game, which is used as a simple but paradigmatic instance of observational learning. There are three players, arranged in sequence, each of whom wins a fixed price if she manages to guess the total number of coins...

Bordo and Helbing (2003) examine the business cycle in Western economies over the 1881-2001 period. They examine four distinct periods in economic history and conclude that there is a secular trend towards greater synchronisation for much of the 20th century, and that it takes place across these...

The aim of this paper is to show that random matrix theory (RMT) can be a useful addition to the economist?s tool-kit in the analysis of macro-economic time series data. A great deal of applied economic work relies upon empirical estimates of the correlation matrix. However due to the finite...

Recent theoretical advances in consumption theory suggest that there may exist predictable consumption surges which, if not taken sufficiently into account in forecasting, may lead to predictable forecast errors. We use this insight to identify economic variables that might help improve the...

National accounts data are always revised. Not only recent data, but also figures dating many years back can be revised substantially. This means that there is a danger that an important part of the central bank's information set is flawed for a long period of time. In this paper we present a...

Recent work on policy rules under uncertainty have highlighted the impact of output gap measurement errors on economic outcomes and their importance in the formulation of appropriate policy rules. This paper investigates the reliability of current estimates of the output gap in Canada. We begin...

We start from the assertion that a useful monetary policy design should be founded on more realistic assumptions about what policymakers can know at the time when policy decisions have to be made. Since the Taylor rule - if used as an operational device - implies a forward looking behaviour, we...