Parametric and semiparametric estimated wage equations, which correct for sample selection bias, are used to assess the returns to eduction and extent of ethnic 'discrimination' in (Peninsular) Malaysia. In particular, this paper focuses on the level of 'discrimination' between Malay and Chinese...

One of the stylized facts of unemployment is that shifts in its mean rate between decades and half-decades account for most of its variance. In this paper, we use a statistical analysis based on Markov switching regression models to identify the dates of infrequent changes in the mean of the...

Health insurance in the USA for most of the non-aged population is provided as a fringe benefit that is received by an adult family member as part of his or her compensation package. In husband and wife households health insurance is more likely to be part of the husband's compensation package...

This paper demonstrates some techniques for testing the robustness of cross-section and panel data regressions, and applies them to the influential augmented Solow growth model. The paper focuses on robust estimation and analysis of sensitivity to measurement error. In particular, it is shown...

The bank lending channel implies the Federal Reserve can influence real income by controlling the level of intermediated loans. Using the notion of causality developed by Simon (1953) and the causal order methodology developed by Hoover (1990), I test for an operative bank lending channel in the...

This paper uses non-parametric regression with smoothness induced by imposition of a roughness penalty to estimate time-dependent relationships between age and intakes of energy, total fat and saturated fatty acids employing data on household food acquisitions from a continuous survey covering...

Monthly inflation in the United States indicates non-normality in the form of either occasional big shocks or marked changes in the level of the series. We develop a univariate state space model with symmetric stable shocks for this series. The non-Gaussian model is estimated by the...

We describe a test, based on the correlation integral, for the independence of a variable and a vector that can be used with serially dependent data. Monte Carlo simulations suggest that the test has good power to detect dependence in several models, performing nearly as well or better than the...

We consider generalized production functions, introduced in Zellner and Revankar (1969), for output y=g(f) where g is a monotonic function and f is a homogeneous production function. For various choices of the scale elasticity or returns to scale as a function of output, differential equations...

This paper examines the female wage structure focusing on changes at different points in the wage distribution. Newly developed quantile regression methods are used in analysing data from the March Current Population Survey. The results show that while the most significant changes for the less...