In a recent paper, Colombier (2009) uses a robust estimation technique and claims to find empirical evidence that government size has not been detrimental to growth for OECD countries during the 1970 to 2001 period, and that endogenous growth theory is not corroborated. We examine the robustness...

We empirically analyse the returns of both Italian and round-trip open-end funds managed by Italian asset management companies (SGRs) in the period 2003-2008. Taking into account a modified version of the capital asset pricing model (CAPM), we estimated a performance measure for each asset...

In a recent paper, Colombier (2009) uses a robust estimation technique and claims to find empirical evidence that government size has not been detrimental to growth for OECD countries during the 1970 to 2001 period, and that endogenous growth theory is not corroborated. We examine the robustness...

Due to the fact that norms govern individual behavior, which in turn it is related to the environmental behaviour, this study tries to establish a link between human behavior (in terms of cultural values) and the environment. With the use of robust frontiers this paper constructs countries’...

Generalized autoregressive heteroskedasticity (GARCH) models are widely used to reproduce stylized facts of financial time series and today play an essential role in risk management and volatility forecasting. But despite extensive research, problems are still encountered during parameter...

This article describes the implementation of a double-robust estimator for pretest-posttest studies (Lunceford and Davidian, 2004, Statistics in Medicine 23: 2937-2960) and presents a new Stata command (dr) that carries out the procedure. A double-robust estimator gives the analyst two...

This thesis focuses on two statistical problems related to credit scoring. In credit scoring of individuals, two classes are distinguished, namely low and high risk individuals (the so-called "good" and "bad" risk classes). Firstly, we suggest a measure which may be used to study the nature of a...