By international comparison, Finnish pupil achievement is high and school achievement differences small. The Finnish education system is unusual also because there are no national testing programs and information on school quality measures is not publicly disclosed. Is school quality capitalized...

We use data for 198121 candidates and 1351 random election outcomes to estimate the effect of incumbency status on future electoral success. We find no evidence of incumbency advantage using data on randomized elections. In contrast, regression discontinuity design, using optimal bandwidths,...

This paper presents an econometric mediation analysis. It considers identification of production functions and the sources of output effects (treatment effects) from experimental interventions when some inputs are mismeasured and others are entirely omitted.

This paper examines the effect of measurement error in the dependent variable on quantile regression, because unlike OLS regression, even classical measurement error can generate bias. I examine the pattern and size of the bias using both simulation and an empirical example. The simulations...

The empirical literature on mergers, market power and collusion in differentiated markets has mainly focused on methods relying on output and/or panel data. In contrast to this literature we suggest a novel approach that allows for the detection of collusive behavior among a group of firms...

This paper studies estimation and specification testing in threshold regression with endogeneity. Three key results differ from those in regular models. First, both the threshold point and the threshold effect parameters are shown to be identified without the need for instrumentation. Second, in...

Poverty being multi-dimensional in nature is the product of various interactive socioeconomic factors. Some of the factors shaping economic status of the household may be cited as widowhood, disability, illiteracy, ageing, household size, household status, dependency, low wages of the female...

This paper examines the impact of accelerating privatization and trade liberalization initiatives on wage and job quality outcomes of the working poor in the Egyptian manufacturing sector. Determinants of wage and job quality are estimated using panel and quantile regression methods and...

This paper estimates a quadratic stochastic frontier production function to examine the determinants of technical efficiency in rice farming in Bangladesh using the computer program FRONTIER 4.1. Primary data has been collected using multi-stage random sampling technique from twelve villages in...

In finite samples, the use of a slightly endogenous but highly relevant instrument can reduce mean-squared error (MSE). Building on this observation, I propose a moment selection criterion for GMM in which moment conditions are chosen based on the MSE of their associated estimators rather than...