Nowcasting methods have become a crucial tool for central banks and investors due to their timeliness and ability to make 'on the spot' predictions. However, despite their popularity, there has been little research into statistical methods for the comparison of different nowcasts across multiple...

This paper provides novel tests for comparing out-of-sample predictive ability of two or more competing models that are possibly overlapping. The tests do not require pre-testing, they allow for dynamic misspecification and are valid under different estimation schemes and loss functions. In...

Self-reported survey data are often plagued by the presence of heaping. Accounting for this measurement error is crucial for the identification and consistent estimation of the underlying model (parameters) from such data. This paper introduces two Stata commands. The first command, heapmph,...

This paper provides distribution free tests for detecting sample selection in conditional quantile functions. The first test is an omitted predictor test with the propensity score as the omitted variable. In the case of rejection we cannot distinguish between rejection due to genuine selection...

In 2005, the Indian Government launched a conditional cash-incentive program to encourage institutional delivery. This paper studies the effects of the program on neonatal mortality using district-level household survey data. We model mortality using survival analysis, paying special attention...