The instrumental variables strategy is commonly employed in empirical research. For correct inference using this econometric technique, the instruments must be perfectly exogenous and relevant. In fact, the standard t-ratio test statistic used in this context yields unreliable and often...

Currently, the commonly employed instrumental variables strategy relies on the knife-edge assumption of perfect exogeneity for valid inference. To make reliable inferences on the structural parameters under violations of exogeneity one must know the true correlation between the structural error...

Censored median regression models have been shown to be useful for analyzing a variety of censored survival data with the robustness property. We study sparse estimation and inference of censored median regression. The new method minimizes an inverse censoring probability weighted least absolute...

Statistical models involving latent variables are widely used in many areas of applications, such as biomedical science and social science. When likelihood-based parametric inferential methods are used to make statistical inference, certain distributional assumptions on the latent variables are...

Model selection is important for longitudinal data analysis. But up to date little work has been done on variable selection for generalized linear mixed models (GLMM). In this paper we propose and study a class of variable selection methods. Full likelihood (FL) approach is proposed for...

This dissertation studies foreign firms shareholder value and earnings-related information measures in relation with the implications of the Sarbanes-Oxley Act of 2002. Chapter One addresses the value implications and empirically tests the changes in market values of foreign firms around SOX...

Limited dependent variable (LDV) panel data models pose substantial challenges in maximum likelihood estimation. The likelihood function in such models typically contains multivariate integrals that are often analytically intractable. To overcome such problem in a panel probit model with...

The first chapter of my thesis develops and estimates a dynamic structural partial equilibrium model of schooling and work decisions.  The estimated model explicitly accounts for the simultaneous choice of enrolling in school and working.  It also allows for endogenous leisure choices,...

This thesis is organized in three chapters. In the first two chapters, an econometric model selection procedure and a method to improve some existing estimators are proposed. In the third chapter, a theoretical microeconomic analysis of herd behavior is performed under a fairly new set of...

This dissertation consists of three essays, first two of which consider a new estimation method of dynamic panel data models and the last one considers an application of these models. The first essay (Chapter 1) offers empirical likelihood (EL) estimation of dynamic panel data models, which...