The paper brings together methods from two disciplines: machine learning theory and robust statistics. Robustness properties of machine learning methods based on convex risk minimization are investigated for the problem of pattern recognition. Assumptions are given for the existence of the...

We propose simultaneous mean-variance regression for the linear estimation and approximation of conditional mean functions. In the presence of heteroskedasticity of unknown form, our method accounts for varying dispersion in the regression outcome across the support of conditioning variables by...

We develop inference procedures for policy analysis based on regression methods. We consider policy interventions that correspond to either changes in the distribution of covariates, or changes in the conditional distribution of the outcome given covariates, or both. Under either of these policy...

Counterfactual distributions are important ingredients for policy analysis and decomposition analysis in empirical economics. In this article we develop modeling and inference tools for counterfactual distributions based on regression methods. The counterfactual scenarios that we consider...

Recent research exploits a variety of natural experiments that create exogenous variation in annual school days to estimate the average effect of formal schooling on students' academic achievement. However, the extant literature's focus on average effects masks potentially important variation in...

Recently prostate and ovarian cancer has been related to milk consumption. However, existing observational studies based on country level data do not attempt to identify causal effects since they are only based on simple cross-sectional analyses. This paper takes a step toward estimating of...

This paper proposes new ℓ1-penalized quantile regression estimators for panel data, which explicitly allows for individual heterogeneity associated with covariates. We conduct Monte Carlo simulations to assess the small sample performance of the new estimators and provide comparisons of new...