Results on nonparametric kernel estimators of density differ according to the assumed degree of density smoothness; it is often assumed that the density function is at least twice differentiable. However, there are cases where non-smooth density functions may be of interest. We provide...

The binary-response maximum score (MS) estimator is a robust estimator, which can accommodate heteroskedasticity of an unknown form; J. Horowitz (1992) defined a smoothed maximum score estimator SMS) and demonstrated that this improves the convergence rate for sufficiently smooth conditional...

An increasing fraction of jobs in the U.S. labor market explicitly pay workers for their performance using a bonus, a commission, or a piece rate. In this paper, we look at the effect of the growing incidence of performance pay on wage inequality. The basic premise of the paper is that...

The concept of stochastic dominance is defined, and its relation to welfare, poverty, and income inequality explained. A brief discussion is provided of how statistical inference may be performed for hypotheses relating to stochastic dominance.

We model international rivalry between a domestic firm that is going through a leaming-by-doing phase, and a mature foreign rival. We show that the optimal production subsidy for the domestic firm depends on the degree of strategic sophistication of the foreign firm.Optimal production subsidy...

Although global free trade is efficient, each country’s benefit from free trade depends on the path that leads to the global free trade agreement. Using a dynamic model of trading bloc formation, we show that when global free trade is reached gradually, the countries that are initially...

We experimentally examine the impact of buyer concentration on the pricing of a monopolist. In our experimental markets, a monopolist faces either two or four buyers. Markets with two buyers achieve significantly lower prices, sometimes below competitive levels, than those with four buyers. We...

The difference in yields between long-term and short-term securities has been used both as a business cycle leading indicator and as an indicator of the current impact of monetary policy. This paper tests for an asymmetry, in the form of a threshold effect, such that the impact of the yield...

For quantities that are approximately stationary, the information content of statistical forecasts tends to decline as the forecast horizon increases, and there exists a maximum horizon beyond which forecasts cannot provide discernibly more information about the variable than is present in the...

We consider the problem of determining the horizon beyond which forecasts from time series models of stationary processes add nothing to the forecast implicit in the conditional mean. We refer to this as the content horizon for forecasts, and define a forecast content function at horizons s =...