Most modern supervised statistical/machine learning (ML) methods are explicitly designed to solve prediction problems very well. Achieving this goal does not imply that these methods automatically deliver good estimators of causal parameters. Examples of such parameters include individual...

Under the assumption that individuals know the conditional distributions of signals given the payoff-relevant parameters, existing results conclude that as individuals observe infinitely many signals, their beliefs about the parameters will eventually merge. We first show that these results are...

We consider the problem of inference on a class of sets describing a collection of admissible models as solutions to a single smooth inequality. Classical and recent examples include the Hansen–Jagannathan sets of admissible stochastic discount factors, Markowitz–Fama mean–variance sets...

This paper gives identification and estimation results for marginal effects in nonlinear panel models. We find that linear fixed effects estimators are not consistent, due in part to marginal effects not being identified. We derive bounds for marginal effects and show that they can tighten...

Quantile regression is an increasingly important empirical tool in economics and other sciences for analyzing the impact of a set of regressors on the conditional distribution of an outcome. Extremal quantile regression, or quantile regression applied to the tails, is of interest in many...

We develop inference procedures for policy analysis based on regression methods. We consider policy interventions that correspond to either changes in the distribution of covariates, or changes in the conditional distribution of the outcome given covariates, or both. Under either of these policy...

In this paper we introduce various set inference problems as they appear in finance and propose practical and powerful inferential tools. Our tools will be applicable to any problem where the set of interest solves a system of smooth estimable inequalities, though we will particularly focus on...

We develop a practical and novel method for inference on intersection bounds, namely bounds defined by either the infimum or supremum of a parametric or nonparametric function, or equivalently, the value of a linear programming problem with a potentially infinite constraint set. Our approach is...

In this paper, we develop a new censored quantile instrumental variable (CQIV)estimator and describe its properties and computation. The CQIV estimator combines Powell(1986) censored quantile regression (CQR) to deal semiparametrically with censoring, with a control variable approach to...