Four alternative but related approaches to empirical evaluation of policy interventions are studied: social experiments, natural experiments, matching methods, and instrumental variables. In each case the necessary assumptions and the data requirements are considered for estimation of a number...

An overview is presented of some parametric and semi-parametric models, estimators, and specification tests that can be used to analyze ordered response variables. In particular, limited dependent variable models that generalize ordered probit are compared to regression models that generalize...

Panel data play an important role in empirical economics. With panel data one can answer questions about microeconomic dynamic behavior that could not be answered with cross sectional data. Panel data techniques are also useful for analyzing cross sectional data with grouping. This paper...

This paper develops a model in which a continuum of consumers choose froma continuum of locations indexed by school quality. It computes equilibria that are sustained by a price function that matches consumers to different locations based on their willingness to pay for school quality. In...

We provide easy to verify suffcient conditions for the consistency and asymptotic normality of a class of semiparametric optimization estimators where the criterion function does not obey standard smoothness conditions and simultaneously depends on some preliminary nonparametric estimators. Our...

One of the areas of policy research where randomized field trials have been utilized most intensively is welfare reform. Starting in the late 1960s with experimental tests of a negative income tax and continuing through current experimental tests of recent welfare reforms, randomized evaluations...

The impact of covariate measurement error on quantile regression functions is investigated using a small variance approximation. The approximation shows how the error contaminated and error free quantile regression functions are related, a key factor being the distribution of the error free...

Conditions are derived under which there is local nonparametric identification of derivatives of structural equations in nonlinear triangular simultaneous equations systems. The attack on this problem is via conditional quantile functions and exploits local quantile independence conditions. The...