Standard annuities are offered at one price to all individuals of the same age and gender. Individual mortality heterogeneity exposes insurers to adverse selection since only relatively healthy lives are expected to purchase annuities. As a result standard annuities are priced assuming...

The Hausman (1978) test is based on the vector of differences of two estimators. It is usually assumed that one of the estimators is fully efficient, since this simplifies calculation of the test statistic. However, this assumption limits the applicability of the test, since widely used...

Measurement invariance is an important assumption in the Rasch model and mixture models constitute a flexible way of checking for a violation of this assumption by detecting unobserved heterogeneity in item response data. Here, a general class of Rasch mixture models is established and...

This paper suggests random and fixed effects spatial two-stage least squares estimators for the generalized mixed regressive spatial autoregressive panel data model. This extends the generalized spatial panel model of Baltagi, Egger and Pfaffermayr (2013) by the inclusion of a spatial lag...

We consider an exact factor model and derive a Lagrange multiplier-type test for unit roots in the idiosyncratic components. The asymptotic distribution of the statistic is derived under the misspecification that the differenced factors are white noise. We prove that the asymptotic distribution...

Recent developments within the panel unit-root literature have illustrated how the exact factor model serves as a parsimonious framework and allows for consistent maximum likelihood inference even when it is misspecified contra the more general approximate factor model. In this paper we consider...

This chapter presents a unified set of estimation methods for fitting a rich array of models describing dynamic relationships within a longitudinal data setting. The discussion surveys approaches for characterizing the micro dynamics of continuous dependent variables both over time and across...

We consider a latent group panel structure as recently studied by Su, Shi, and Phillips (2016), where the number of groups is unknown and has to be determined empirically. We propose a testing procedure to determine the number of groups. Our test is a residual-based Lagrange multiplier-type...

This paper derives unbalanced versions of the tests statistics for ¯rst order serial correlation and random individual e®ects summarized in Sosa Escudero and Bera (2001), and updates their xttest1 routine. The derived tests statistics should be useful for applied researchers faced with the...