This paper proposes a test to check the specification of models with unobserved individual effects integrated out by quadrature and also a simple way of increasing the flexibility of this type of model. The results of a Monte Carlo study and an application using a well-known data set illustrate...

We critically review the recent literature on currency unions, and discuss the methodological challenges posed by the empirical assessment of their costs and benefits. In the process, we provide evidence on the economic effects of the euro. In particular, and in contrast with estimates of the...

We show that the quantile regression estimator is consistent and asymptotically normal when the error terms are correlated within clusters but independent across clusters. A consistent estimator of the covariance matrix of the asymptotic distribution is provided and we propose a specification...

In this note we reappraise the measure of the importance of time-dependent price setting rules suggested by Klenow and Kryvtsov (2005, "State-Dependent or Time-Dependent Pricing: Does It Matter for Recent U.S. Inflation?," Bank of Canada Working Paper 05-4). Furthermore, we propose an...

We propose a semi-parametric mode regression estimator for the case in which the variate of interest is continuous and observable over its entire un- bounded support. The estimator is semi-parametric in that the conditional mode is specified as a parametric function, but only mild assumptions...

Infrequent price changes at the firm level are now well documented in the literature. However, a number of issues remain partly unaddressed. This paper contributes to the literature on price stickiness by investigating the lags of price adjustments to different types of shocks. We find that...

In this paper it is argued that models for completed fertility have to take into consideration that childless couples and couples with an only child are qualitatively different from couples with two or more children. Indeed, these differences may be the cause of the underdispersion that...

In the estimation of models with averaged data, weighted least squares is often used and recommended as a way of improving the efficiency of the estimator. However, if the size of the different groups is not conditionally independent of the regressand, consistent estimation may not be possible...

Building on the work of Lustbader and Moolgavkar (1985, 'A Diagnostic Statistic for the Score Test', Journal of the American Statistical Association 80, 375-379), this paper studies influence diagnostics for score tests. The diagnostic proposed by Lustbader and Moolgavkar is reassessed and...

Tests of overidentifying restrictions are widely used in practice. However, there is often confusion about the nature of their null hypothesis and about the interpretation of their outcome. In this note we argue that these tests give little information on whether the instruments are correlated...