We examine the effect of survey measurement error on the empirical relationship between child mental health and personal and family characteristics, and between child mental health and educational progress. Our contribution is to use unique UK survey data that contains (potentially biased)...

Factor rotation is widely used to interpret the estimated factor loadings from latent variable models. Rotation methods embody a priori concepts of 'complexity' of factor structures, which they seek to minimise. Surprisingly, it is rare for researchers to exploit one of the most common and...

<p>Implementation of broad approaches to welfare analysis usually entails the use of 'subjective' welfare indicators. We analyse BHPS data on financial wellbeing to determine whether reported current and retrospective perceptions are consistent with each other and with the existence of a common...</p>

We develop a simulated ML method for short-panel estimation of one or more dynamic linear equations, where the dependent variables are only partially observed through ordinal scales. We argue that this latent autoregression (LAR) model is often more appropriate than the usual state-dependence...

We estimate parametric and semi-parametric binary choice models of benefit take-up by British pensioners and use a revealed preference argument to infer the cash-equivalent value of disutility arising from stigma or complexity of the claims process. These implicit costs turn out to be relatively...

We consider the misreporting of illicit drug use and juvenile smoking in self-report surveys and its consequences for statistical inference. Panel data containing repeated self-reports of 'lifetime' prevalence give unambiguous evidence of misreporting as 'recanting' of earlier reports of drug...

The use of genetic markers as instrumental variables (IV) is receiving increasing attention from economists. This paper examines the conditions that need to be met for genetic variants to be used as instruments. We combine the IV literature with that from genetic epidemiology, with an...