One of the proposals most frequently raised to increase flexibility of the German labour market is the liberalization of the job protection law. It applies only to those firms employing a more than a cut-off number of employees. Thus, firms just above the cut-off face considerably higher...

To estimate the effective dose level ED a in the common binary response model, several parametric and nonparametric estimators have been proposed in the literature. In the present paper, we focus on nonparametric methods and present a detailed numerical comparison of four different approaches to...

In this paper we present a detailed numerical comparison of three monotone nonparametric kernel regression estimates, which isotonize a nonparametric curve estimator. The first estimate is the classical smoothed isotone estimate of Brunk (1958). The second method has recently been proposed by...

In this paper a new method for monotone estimation of a regression function is proposed. The estimator is obtained by the combination of a density and a regression estimate and is appealing to users of conventional smoothing methods as kernel estimators, local polynomials, series estimators or...

For the common binary response model we propose a direct method for the nonparametric estimation of the effective dose level ED? (0 ? 1). The estimator is obtained by the composition of a nonparametric estimate of the quantile response curve and a classical density estimate. The new method...

Multivariate local linear regression and parametric error correction models are applied to assess price linkages and price transmission patterns between food and energy prices in Spain. Weekly biodiesel, sunflower and crude oil prices observed from November 2006 to October 2010 are used in the...

Varying-coefficient linear models arise from multivariate nonparametric regression, nonlinear time series modelling and forecasting, functional data analysis, longitudinal data analysis, and others. It has been a common practice to assume that the vary-coefficients are functions of a given...