Kernel smoothing techniques have attracted much attention and some notoriety in recent years. The attention is well deserved as kernel methods free researchers from having to impose rigid parametric structure on their data. The notoriety arises from the fact that the amount of smoothing (i.e.,...

The estimation of conditional probability distribution functions (PDFs) in a kernel nonparametric framework has recently received attention. As emphasized by Hall, Racine and Li (2004), these conditional PDFs are extremely useful for a range of tasks including modelling and predicting consumer...

The identification of improved methods for characterizing crop yield densities has experienced a recent surge in activity due in part to the central role played by crop insurance in the Agricultural Risk Protection Act of 2000 (estimates of yield densities are required for the determination of...

The identification of improved methods for characterizing crop yield densities has experienced a recent surge in activity due in part to the central role played by crop insurance in the Agricultural Risk Protection Act of 2000 (estimates of yield densities are required for the determination of...

This paper addresses the following question: How much information do the kernel function and the bandwidth provide for nonparametric kernel estimation? The question is addressed by showing that kernel estimation of a cumulative distribution function (CDF) is an information transmission procedure...

We apply parametric and nonparametric regression discontinuity methodology within a multinomial choice setting to examine the impact of public health care user fee abolition on health facility choice using data from South Africa. The nonparametric model is found to outperform the parametric...

Many practical problems require nonparametric estimates of regression functions, and local polynomial regression has emerged as a leading approach. In applied settings practitioners often adopt either the local constant or local linear variants, or choose the order of the local polynomial to be...