Using PIRLS (Progress in International Reading Literacy Study) data, we investigate which countries' schools can be be classified as significantly better or weaker than Germany's as regards the reading literacy of primary school children. The `standard' approach is to conduct separate tests for...

This paper proposes a novel regularisation method for the estimation of large covariance matrices, which makes use of insights from the multiple testing literature. The method tests the statistical significance of individual pair-wise correlations and sets to zero those elements that are not...

Random Forests are frequently applied as they achieve a high prediction accuracy and have the ability to identify informative variables. Several approaches for variable selection have been proposed to combine and intensify these qualities. An extensive review of the corresponding literature led...

We propose a simple estimator for the weight in a two-component mixture model between a known and an unknown density. We make no parametric assumptions about the unknown component and estimate the weight conservatively, i.e., the estimate is smaller than the true value with high probability. A...

Most panel unit root tests are designed to test the joint null hypothesis of a unit root for each individual series in a panel. After a rejection, it will often be of interest to identify which series can be deemed to be stationary and which series can be deemed nonstationary. Researchers will...

In this paper, I introduce a simple test for the presence of the data-generating process among several non-nested alternatives. The test is an extension of the classical J test for non-nested regression models. I also provide a bootstrap version of the test that avoids possible size distortions...

This paper investigates the stationarity of the real exchange rates of the currencies for ten Asian countries against the US dollar during the pre-Lehman period. This paper explicitly investigates the presence of a structural break that occurred at unknown dates across countries and which may...

We consider inference on optimal treatment assignments. Our methods are the first to allow for inference on the treatment assignment rule that would be optimal given knowledge of the population treatment effect in a general setting. The procedure uses multiple hypothesis testing methods to...

We consider inference on optimal treatment assignments. Our methods allow for inference on the treatment assignment rule that would be optimal given knowledge of the population treatment effect in a general setting. The procedure uses multiple hypothesis testing methods to determine a subset of...

This paper considers the problem of making inferences about the effects of a program on multiple outcomes when the assignment of treatment status is imperfectly randomized. By imperfect randomization we mean that treatment status is reassigned after an initial randomization on the basis of...