This study first shows that a transactions costs band may exist in commodity spot and futures markets and spatially separated markets as a result of the arbitrage process. Then, by using a bivariate vector error correction model (VECM), this thesis shows that the null hypothesis of linearity can...

There has been an on-going debate about choices of the most suitable model amongst a variety of model specifications and parameterizations. The first dissertation essay investigates whether asymmetric leptokurtic return distributions such as Hansen's (1994) skewed tdistribution combined with...

We propose a new procedure for estimating the survival function of a time-to-event random variable under arbitrary patterns of censoring. Under mild smoothness assumptions, this procedure allows a unified approach to handling different kinds of censoring, while in many cases increasing...

The asymptotic efficiency of indirect estimation methods, such as the efficient method of moments and indirect inference, depends on the choice of the auxiliary model. To date, this choice has been somewhat ad hoc and based on an educated guess. In this article we introduce a class of...

In educational research, students often exist in a multilevel social setting that can be identified by students within classrooms, classrooms nested in schools, schools nested in school districts, school districts nested in school counties, and school counties nested in states. These are...

The law of the tendential fall in the rate of profit has been at the center of theoretical and empirical debates within Marxian political economy ever since the publication of Volume III of Capital. An important limitation of this literature is the absence of a comprehensive econometric analysis...

In the research area of crop yield density estimation and in particular in risk analysis, little emphasis has been given to the appropriateness of transformation methods (e.g., removing a linear trend) and how such transformations impact the reliability of the empirical distribution functions...

A cultura cafeeira foi e continua sendo de primordial importância para a economiabrasileira. Além de importante fonte de renda para a economia brasileira, o café temdestacada participação nas receitas cambiais, na transferência de renda entre setores e naformação de capital no setor...