The standard confidence regions based on the first-order approximation of quantile regression estimators can be inaccurate in small samples. We show that confidence regions based on the smoothed empirical likelihood ratio have coverage errors of order n^{-1} and may be Bartlett-corrected to...

This paper addresses the issue of designing finite-sample corrections to information matrix tests. We review a Cornish-Fisher correction that has been proposed elsewhere and propose an alternative, Bartlett-type correction. Simulation results for skewness, excess kurtosis, normality and...

This paper discusses two alternative two-part models for fractional response variables that are defined as ratios of integers. The first two-part model assumes a Binomial distribution and known group size. It nests the one-part fractional response model proposed by Papke and Wooldridge (1996)...

The analysis of news in the financial context has gained a prominent interest in the last years. This is because of the possible predictive power of such content especially in terms of associated sentiment/mood. In this paper, we focus on a specific aspect of financial news analysis: how the...

Conventional wisdom says that the middle classes in many developed countries have recently suffered losses, in terms of both the share of the total population belonging to the middle class, and also their share in total income. Here, distribution-free methods are developed for inference on these...

A standard test for weak instruments compares the first-stage F-statistic to a table of critical values obtained by Stock and Yogo (2005) using simulations. We derive a closed-form solution for the expectation from which these critical values are derived, as well as present some second-order...

This paper investigates the performance of a jackknife correction to a test for cointegration rank in a vector autoregressive system. The limiting distributions of the jackknife-corrected statistics are derived and the critical values of these distributions are tabulated. Based on these critical...

Several graphical methods for testing univariate composite normality from an i.i.d. sample are presented. They are endowed with correct simultaneous error bounds and yield size-correct tests. As all are based on the empirical CDF, they are also consistent for all alternatives. For one test,...