Modelling strategies for value-added multilevel models are examined. These types of models typically include an endogenous variable and this causes difficulties for the standard estimation techniques that are commonly used to analyse multilevel models. Two alternative estimation strategies are...

In most democracies, at least two out of any three individuals vote for the same party in sequential elections. Here I show that stands on the issues, candidates' attributes and individuals' demographics do not account for all of the persistence over time in voting decisions. I present a new...

A robust principal component analysis can be easily performed by computing the eigenvalues and eigenvectors of a robust estimator of the covariance or correlation matrix. In this paper the authors derive the influence functions and the corresponding asumptotic variances for these robust...

The minimum Covariance Determinant (MCD) scatter estimator is a highly robust estimator for the dispersion matrix of a multivariate, elliptically symmetric distribution. It is fast to compute and intuitively appealing. In this note we derive its influence function and compute the asymptotic...

In this paper we apply the statistical framework recently proposed by Imbens (1999) and Lechner (1999) to identify the causal effects of multiple treatments under the conditional independence assumption. We show that under this assumption, matching with respect to the ratio of the scores allows...

Hodrick-Prescott (HP) Filter of (most often, seasonally adjusted) quaterly series is analysed. Some of the criticism to the filter are adressed. It is seen that, while filtering strongly affects autocorrelations, it has little effect on crosscorrelations. It is argued that the criticism that HP...

In this paper the interest is in testing whether a regression function is polynomial of a certain degree. One possible approach to this testing problem is to do a parametric polynomial fit and a nonparametric fit and to reject the null hypothesis of a polynomial function if the distance between...

Five decades ago, Bhattacharyya established a series of lower bounds for the variance of an unbiased estimator, since then called the Bhattacharyya bounds. In 1974 Blight and Rao have shown that the series of Bhattacharyya bounds converges to the variance of the best unbiased estimator. In this...

The estimation of parameters of lagged multilevel models is considered. This type of model is used in many application areas, including psychology and education, where changes in test results over time can be modelled. Standard estimation techniques are shown to give inconsistent results for...

This paper describes the estimation and testing of regression models that include multivariate generated or computed regressors in the presence of heteroskedasticity in the cross-section case. Heteroskedasticity is often a problem in cross-section data and the usual tests for its presence can...