Parameter shrinkage applied optimally can always reduce error and projection variances from those of maximum likelihood estimation. Many variables that actuaries use are on numerical scales, like age or year, which require parameters at each point. Rather than shrinking these towards zero,...

This paper studies nonparametric estimation of conditional moment models in which the residual functions could be nonsmooth with respect to the unknown functions of endogenous variables. It is a problem of nonparametric nonlinear instrumental variables (IV) estimation, and a difficult nonlinear...

In semiparametric models it is a common approach to under-smooth the nonparametric functions in order that estimators of the finite dimensional parameters can achieve root-n consistency. The requirement of under-smoothing may result as we show from inefficient estimation methods or technical...

Currently available asymptotic results in the literature suggest that matching estimators have higher variance than reweighting estimators. The extant literature comparing the finite sample properties of matching to specific reweighting estimators, however, has concluded that reweighting...

Generalized single-index models are natural extensions of linear models and circumvent the so-called curse of dimensionality. They are becoming increasingly popular in many scientific fields including biostatistics, medicine, economics and financial econometrics. Estimating and testing the model...

This paper examines identification power of the instrument exogeneity assumption in the treatment effect model. We derive the identification region: The set of potential outcome distributions that are compatible with data and the model restriction. The model restrictions whose identifying power...

This paper is concerned with developing uniform confidence bands for functions estimated nonparametrically with instrumental variables. We show that a sieve nonparametric instrumental variables estimator is pointwise asymptotically normally distributed. The asymptotic normality result holds in...

This paper considers semiparametric efficient estimation of conditional moment models with possibly nonsmooth residuals in unknown parametric components (Θ) and unknown functions (h)of endogenous variables. We show that: (1) the penalized sieve minimum distance(PSMD) estimator (ˆΘ, ˆh) can...

Truncation or censoring of the response variable in a regression model is a problem in many applications, e.g. when the response is insurance claims or the durations of unemployment spells. We introduce a local polynomial regression estimator which can deal with such truncated or censored...

We extend the standard evaluation framework to allow for interactions between individuals within segmented markets. An individual's outcome depends not only on the assigned treatment status but also on (features of) the distribution of the assigned treatments in his market. To evaluate how the...