Most of the existing literature on the optimal shape of income tax has a common result - decreasing marginal tax rates. This result stands in sharp contrast with real world income tax systems that are characterized by increasing marginal tax rates. Diamond (1998) made explicit the factors that...

We propose inference procedures for partially identified population features for which the population identification region can be written as a transformation of the Aumann expectation of a properly defined set valued random variable (SVRV). An SVRV is a mapping that associates a set (rather...

Using data on local exchange carriers (LECs), I estimate the total cost function of LECs operating between 1988 and 1995. First, I show that cost complementarities can be nonparametrically identified in many situations where economies of scope and subadditivity—the focus of previous empirical...

We propose inference procedures for partially identified population features for which the population identification region can be written as a transformation of the Aumann expectation of a properly defined set valued random variable (SVRV). An SVRV is a mapping that associates a set (rather...

We propose inference procedures for partially identified population features for which the population identification region can be written as a transformation of the Aumann expectation of a properly defined set valued random variable (SVRV). An SVRV is a mapping that associates a set (rather...

The market structure of the telephone industry has been the focus of much empirical research following the divestiture of AT&T in 1984. Using data on Local Exchange Carriers (LECs), I estimate the total cost function of LECs operating between 1988 and 1995. First, I show that cost...

Economic theory often provides us with qualitative information on the properties of the functions in a model but rarely indicates their explicit functional form. Among these properties one can find monotonicity, concavity and supermodularity, which involve restricting the sign of the...

This paper illustrates how the use of random set theory can benefit partial identification analysis. We revisit the origins of Manski’s work in partial identification (e.g., Manski (1989, 1990)) focusing our discussion on identification of probability distributions and conditional expectations...