Dealing with endogenous regressors is a central challenge of applied research. The standard solution is to use instrumental variables that are assumed to be uncorrelated with unobservables. We instead assume (i) the correlation between the instrument and the error term has the same sign as the...

This essay reviews progress in empirical economics since Leamer's (1983) critique. Leamer highlighted the benefits of sensitivity analysis, a procedure in which researchers show how their results change with changes in specification or functional form. Sensitivity analysis has had a salutary but...

This paper presents the econometric approach to causal modeling. It is motivated by policy problems. New causal parameters are defined and identified to address specific policy problems. Economists embrace a scientific approach to causality and model the preferences and choices of agents to...

A covariance-stationary vector of variables has a Wold representation whose coefficients can be semiparametrically estimated by local projections (Jordà, 2005). Substituting the Wold representations for variables in model expressions generates restrictions that can be used by the method of...

The paper presents a new method to solve DSGE models with a great number of heterogeneous agents. Using tools from systems and control theory, it is shown how to reduce the dimension of the state and the policy vector so that the reduced model approximates the original model with high precision....

This paper asks the question: Why has the ?general-to-specific? cointegrated VAR approach as developed in Europe had only limited success in the US as a tool for doing empirical macroeconomics, where what might be called a ?theory comes first? approach dominates? The reason this paper highlights...

First and higher order digits in data sets of natural and socio-economic processes often follow a distribution called Benford's law. This phenomenon has been used in many business and scientific applications, especially in fraud detection for financial data. In this paper, we analyse whether...

The discussion about the use of semiparametric analysis in empirical research in economics is as old as the methods are. This article can certainly not be more than a small contribution to the polemic question how useful is non- or semiparametric statistics for applied econometrics. The goal is...

Dieser Beitrag stellt ausgew ahlte Ergebnisse des vom Zentrum für Europäische Wirtschaftsforschung (ZEW) im Auftrag des IAB und des Ministeriums für Arbeit und Soziales Rheinland-Pfalz bearbeiteten Forschungsprojekts "Arbeitsplatzeffekte gemeinnütziger Arbeitnehmerüberlassungen in...