"Matching" is a statistical technique used to evaluate the effect of a treatment by comparing the treated and non-treated units in an observational study. Matching provides an alternative to older estimation methods, such as ordinary least squares (OLS), which involves strong assumptions that...

The dominant practice in economics is to choose the mathematical specification of model relations on the basis of convenience, without much theoretical support. This paper discusses how quantitative model specifications can, in some cases, be given a more formal scientific underpinning in the...

As will be shown the current use of Desirability Indices for optimisation purposes in experimental design gives biased results in general. Researchers were satisfied with approximative solutions as unbiased results would have required analytical expressions for the distributions of Desirability...