Recent research on macroeconomic growth has been focused on resolving several key issues, two of which, specification uncertainty of the growth process and variable uncertainty, have received much attention in the recent literature. The standard procedure has been to assume a linear growth...

Monotonicity of the equilibrium bidding strategy is a key property of structural auction models. Traditional nonparametric estimators provide a flexible means of uncovering salient features of auction data, but do not formally impose the monotonicity assumption that is inherent in the models...

This paper presents a method to test for multimodality of an estimated kernel density of parameter estimates from a local-linear least-squares regression derivative. The procedure is laid out in seven simple steps and a suggestion for implementation is proposed. A Monte Carlo exercise is used to...

In this paper we compare two flexible estimators of technical efficiency in a cross-sectional setting: the nonparametric kernel SFA estimator of Fan, Li and Weersink (1996) to the nonparametric bias corrected DEA estimator of Kneip, Simar andWilson (2008). We assess the finite sample performance...

Most empirical work in economic growth assumes either a Cobb-Douglas production function expressed in logs or a log-approximated constant elasticity of substitution specification. Estimates from each are likely biased due to logging the model and the latter can also suffer from approximation...

In this paper we propose a very flexible estimator in the context of truncated regression that does not require parametric assumptions. To do this, we adapt the theory of local maximum likelihood estimation. We provide the asymptotic results and illustrate the performance of our estimator on...

In this paper we extend the work of Färe and Zelenyuk (2003) to find a theoretically justified method of aggregating Malmquist Productivity Indexes over individual decision making units (firms, countries, etc.) into a group Malmquist Productivity Index. We also consider the aggregation of...

In this note we investigate the power of significance test for dummy-variables in the context of Simar and Wilson (2003) two-stage efficiency analysis model.

Shephard’s distance functions are widely used instruments for characterizing technology and for estimating efficiency in contemporary economic theory and practice. Recently, they have been generalized by the Luenberger shortage function, or Chambers-Chung-Färe directional distance function....

In this study, we explore the pattern of efficiency among enterprises in China’s 29 provinces across different ownership types in heavy and light industries and across different regions (coastal, central and western). We do so by performing a bootstrap-based analysis of group efficiencies...