In the robust statistics literature, a wide variety of models have been devel- oped to cope with outliers in a rather large number of scenarios. Nevertheless, a recurrent problem for the empirical implementation of these estimators is that optimization algorithms generally do not perform well...

The aim of this paper is to test whether electoral systems and human development are linked. Using high-quality data and very simple panel data econometric techniques, we show that electoral systems play a critical role in explaining the difference in the levels of human development between...

In empirical studies often the values of some variables for some observations are much larger or smaller than the values for the other observations in the sample. These extreme observations, or outliers, often have a large impact on the results of statistical analyses. Conclusions based on a...

In this paper, we follow the same logic as in Hausman (1978) to create a testing procedure that checks for the presence of outliers by comparing a regression estimator that is robust to outliers (S-estimator), with another that is more e¢ cient but a¤ected by them. Some simulations are...

The main goal of this paper is to warn practitioners of the danger of neglecting outliers in regression analysis, in particular, good leverage points (i.e. points lying close to the regression hyperplane but outlying in the x-dimension). While the types of outliers which do influence regression...

From the literature on decentralization, it appears that the fiscal vertical imbalance (i.e. the dependence of sub-national governments on national government revenues to support their expenditures) is somehow inherent to multi-level governments. Using a stylized model we show that this leads to...