Several recent papers employ the regression discontinuity design (RDD) to estimate the causal effect of a diploma (or similar credentials) on wages. Using a simple model of asymmetric information, I show that RDD estimates the information value of a diploma. A positive information value arises...

This paper presents empirical evidence of a positive effect of council size on government spending using a data set of 2,056 municipalities in the German state of Bavaria over a period of 21 years. We apply a regression discontinuity design to avoid an endogeneity bias. In particular, we exploit...

A recent literature has used variation just around deterministic legislative population thresholds to identify the causal effects of institutional changes. This paper reviews the use of regression discontinuity designs using such population thresholds. Our concern involves three arguments: (1)...

We focus on the construction of confidence corridors for multivariate nonparametric generalized quantile regression functions. This construction is based on asymptotic results for the maximal deviation between a suitable nonparametric estimator and the true function of interest which follow...

Classical regression analysis uses partial coefficients to measure the influences of some variables (regressors) on another variable (regressand). However, a descriptive point of view shows that these coefficients are very bad measures of influence. Their interpretation as an average change of...

This paper investigates the effects of ordinal regressors in linear regression models. Each ordered categorical variable is interpreted as a rough measurement of an underlying continuous variable as it is often done in microeconometrics for the dependent variable. It is shown that using ordinal...

The purpose of this note is to introduce the technique and main findings of meta-analysis to the reader, who is unfamiliar with the field and has the usual objections. A meta-analysis is a quantitative survey of a literature reporting estimates of the same parameter. The funnel showing the...

To study the development of wage inequality is important for the economic performance as well as for the development of employment. First, I estimate the remuneration to personal characteristics for Germans and immigrants across the wage distribution using quantile regression. My database is the...

Empirical support for the long-run Fisher effect, a hypothesis that a permanent change in inflation leads to an equal change in the nominal interest rate, has been hard to come by. This paper provides a plausible explanation of why past studies have been unable to find support for the long-run...

It has become customary to estimate the New Keynesian Phillips Curve (NKPC) with GMM using a large instrument set that includes lags of variables that are ad hoc to the model. Researchers have also conventionally used real unit labor cost (RULC) as the proxy for real marginal cost, even though...