In this paper we evaluate the premise from the recent literature on Monte Carlo studies that an empirically motivated simulation exercise is informative about the actual ranking of various estimators when applied to a particular problem. We consider two alternative designs and provide an...

Propensity score matching estimators have two advantages. One is that they overcome the curse of dimensionality of covariate matching, and the other is that they are nonparametric. However, the propensity score is usually unknown and needs to be estimated. If we estimate it nonparametrically, we...

This paper is concerned with testing the time series implications of the capital asset pricing model (CAPM) due to Sharpe (1964) and Lintner (1965), when the number of securities, N, is large relative to the time dimension, T, of the return series. In the case of cross-sectionally correlated...

This paper investigates the causes of the well documented association between part-time employment and low occupational attainment amongst British women. In particular, the relative importance of structural factors and unobserved heterogeneity to the occupational attainment of women who choose...

The identification of average causal effects of a treatment in observational studies is typically based either on the unconfoundedness assumption or on the availability of an instrument. When available, instruments may also be used to test for the unconfoundedness assumption (exogeneity of the...