In this paper we develop a structural equation model with latent variables in an ordinal setting which allows us to test broker-dealer predictive ability of financial market movements. We use a multivariate logit model in a latent factor framework, develop a tractable estimator based on a...

Much of the trading activity in Equity markets is directed to brokerage houses. In exchange they provide so-called “soft dollars” which basically are amounts spent in “research” for identifying profitable trading opportunities. Soft dollars represent about USD 1 out of every USD 10 paid...

Child birth leads to a break in a woman's employment history and is considered one reason for the relatively poor labor market outcomes observed for women compared to men. However, the time spent at home after child birth varies significantly across mothers and is likely driven by observed and,...

Child birth leads to a break in a woman's employment history and is considered one reason for the relatively poor labor market outcomes observed for women compared to men. However, the time spent at home after child birth varies significantly across mothers and is likely driven by observed and,...

Internal market structure analysis infers both brand attributes and consumer preferences for those attributes from preference or choice data. The authors exploit a new method for estimating probit models from panel data to infer market structures that can be displayed in few dimensions, even...

Hedge Fund returns are often highly serially correlated mainly due to illiquidity exposures given that investments in such securities tend to be inactively traded and associated market prices are not always readily available. Following that, observed returns of such alternative investments tend...

An explication of the key ideas behind the Cointegrated Vector Autoregression Approach. The CVAR approach is related to Haavelmo's famous quot;Probability Approach in Econometricsquot; (1944). It insists on careful stochastic specification as a necessary groundwork for econometric inference and...

A common stochastic restriction in econometric models separable in the latent variables is the assumption of stochastic independence between the unobserved and observed exogenous variables. Both simple and composite tests of this assumption are derived from properties of independence empirical...

Parameter shrinkage is known to reduce fitting and prediction errors in linear models. When the variables are dummies for age, period, etc. shrinkage is more commonly applied to differences between adjacent parameters, perhaps by fitting cubic splines or piecewise-linear curves (linear splines)...