Partial derivatives have a special place in economics since the marginal revolution of the 1850s. We present results from multivariate partial derivative estimates using nonlinear non-parametric regressions in a finite difference method, accessible via the R-package NNS. Numerical partial...

This chapter reviews recent advances in nonparametric and semiparametric estimation, with an emphasis on applicability to empirical research and on resolving issues that arise in implementation. It considers techniques for estimating densities, conditional mean functions, derivatives of...

This paper discusses pairing double/debiased machine learning (DDML) with stacking, a model averaging method for combining multiple candidate learners, to estimate structural parameters. We introduce two new stacking approaches for DDML: short-stacking exploits the cross-fitting step of DDML to...

Portfolio sorting is ubiquitous in the empirical finance literature, where it has been widely used to identify pricing anomalies in different asset classes. Despite the popularity of portfolio sorting, little attention has been paid to the statistical properties of the procedure or to the...

We provide general compactness results for many commonly used parameter spaces in nonparametric estimation. We consider three kinds of functions: (1) functions with bounded domains which satisfy standard norm bounds, (2) functions with bounded domains which do not satisfy standard norm bounds,...

In this paper, we address the identification and estimation of insurance models where insurees have private information about their risk and risk aversion. The model includes random damages and allows for several claims, while insurees choose from a finite number of coverages. We show that the...

This paper introduces a new specification for the heterogeneous autoregressive (HAR) model for the realized volatility of S&P500 index returns. In this new model, the coefficients of the HAR are allowed to be time-varying with unknown functional forms. We propose a local linear method for...

We study nonparametric estimation of the volatility function of a diffusion process from discrete data, when the data are blurred by additional noise. This noise can be white or correlated, and serves as a model for microstructure effects in financial modeling, when the data are given on an...