Testing for asymmetric information in insurance markets has become a very important issue in the empirical literature in the last years. We analyze the (private) accident insurance, which has not been analyzed before in the literature, but covers one of the most important risks faced by...

This paper examines the small-sample performance of spatial HAC (SHAC) estimators of the standard errors on parameters. We find that, in small to moderately-sized datasets, the use of HAC estimators may be recommended only with a relatively large degree of cross-sectional interdependence.

This article tests the linearity assumption underlying the popular heterogeneous autoregressive model for realized volatility (HAR-RV). We implement a consistent model specification test that is robust to both distributional and model misspecification. We find that, using a nonparametric HAR-RV...

It is widely known that size distortions of the so-called KPSS stationarity test, introduced in Kwiatkowski et al. (1992), become severe with persistent data. We propose the sieve bootstrap introduced by Bühlmann (1998) as an appropriate bootstrap for dependent processes, to obtain notable...

By means of an extensive Monte Carlo simulation study based on the design of Chen and Hong (2012) we compare the performance of the tests they proposed for parameter stability with the linearity test of Li et al. (2002) and the functional form test of Li and Wang (1998). We find that the test...

This paper proposes a test for path dependence in discrete panel data based on a characterization of stochastic processes that are mixtures of Markov chains. This test is applied to European Community Household Panel data on employment histories. The data allow to reject the null of no path...

We propose a kernel-based estimator for a partially linear model in triangular systems where endogenous variables appear both in the nonparametric and linear component functions. Our estimator is easy to implement, has an explicit algebraic structure, and exhibits good finite sample performance...

The Tobit model (censored regression model) is an important basic model appearing in many applications in economics. In this paper we consider a duration Tobit model in which a duration variable which counts the number of times the data is being censored is included as a covariate. We show that...

We examine the distributions of Chinese and Indian city sizes for seven decades (1950s to 2010s) using lognormal, Pareto, and general Pareto distributions. We ascertain which distribution fits the data and how the city size distributions change during these periods. The Chinese city size...

This paper uses a two-step approach to characterize the evolution of US macroeconomic and financial variables during episodes of very high uncertainty. First, we identify episodes of very high uncertainty using a regime-switching model. Second, we assess the behavior of macroeconomic and...