In this paper we present a detailed numerical comparison of three monotone nonparametric kernel regression estimates, which isotonize a nonparametric curve estimator. The first estimate is the classical smoothed isotone estimate of Brunk (1958). The second method has recently been proposed by...

To estimate the effective dose level ED a in the common binary response model, several parametric and nonparametric estimators have been proposed in the literature. In the present paper, we focus on nonparametric methods and present a detailed numerical comparison of four different approaches to...

For the common binary response model we propose a direct method for the nonparametric estimation of the effective dose level ED? (0 ? 1). The estimator is obtained by the composition of a nonparametric estimate of the quantile response curve and a classical density estimate. The new method...

In this paper a new method for monotone estimation of a regression function is proposed. The estimator is obtained by the combination of a density and a regression estimate and is appealing to users of conventional smoothing methods as kernel estimators, local polynomials, series estimators or...

A comparison of hazard rates of duration outcomes before and after policy changes is hampered by non-identification if there is unobserved heteogeneity in the effects and no model structure is imposed. We develop a discontinuity approach that overcomes this by exploiting variation in the moment...

A new bandwidth selection method that uses different bandwidths for the local linear regression estimators on the left and the right of the cut-off point is proposed for the sharp regression discontinuity design estimator of the average treatment effect at the cut-off point. The asymptotic mean...

Causal effects of a policy change on the hazard rates of a duration outcome variable are not identified from a comparison of spells before and after the policy change when there is unobserved heterogeneity in the effects and no model structure is imposed. We develop a discontinuity approach that...

In this thesis we are interested in financial risk and the instrument we want to use is Value-at-Risk (VaR). VaR is the maximum loss over a given period of time at a given confidence level. Many definitions of VaR exist and some will be introduced throughout this thesis. There two main ways to...

We investigate the problem of optimal choice of the smoothing parameter (bandwidth) for the regression discontinuity estimator. We focus on estimation by local linear regression, which was shown to be rate optimal (Porter, 2003). Investigation of an expected-squared-error-loss criterion reveals...

Causal effects of a policy change on hazard rates of a duration outcome variable are not identified from a comparison of spells before and after the policy change, if there is unobserved heterogeneity in the effects and no model structure is imposed. We develop a discontinuity approach that...