In this paper, I review a number of techniques which are based on the qualitative features of an econometric model (presence of a variable in a relationship .) The issues addressed span from the reconstruction of the theoretical structure behind the model speciication (which is oftentimes lost as the size of the model increases) to the possibility of reordering the equations aimed at achieving ...

As environmental issues have become increasingly important in economic research and policy for sustainable development, firms in the private sector have introduced environmental and social issues in conducting their business activities. Such behaviour is tracked by the Dow Jones Sustainable Indexes (DJSI) through financial market indexes that are derived from the Dow Jones Global Indexes. The s...

The goal of this paper is to illustrate the potential usefulness of econometrics as a tool to assist private policy makers. We provide a case study and detailed econometric analysis of the automobile replacement policy adopted by a large car rental company. Unlike public policy making — where the benefits from using econometric models and “science-based” approaches to policy making are hard to ...

This paper considers parametric inference in a wide range of structural econometric models. It illustrates how the indirect inference principle can be used in the inference of these models. Specifically, we show that an ordinary least squares (OLS) estimation can be used as an auxiliarymodel, which leads to amethod that is similar in spirit to a two-stage least squares (2SLS) estimator. Monte C...

Leamer and McManus applied Extreme Bound Analysis (EBA) in an empirical study of the deterrent effects of capital punishment and other penalties. Their analysis has questioned the validity of the deterrence hypothesis. The thrust of our paper is two-fold: First, by applying EBA to well known econometric models of demand, production, and human-capital investment, our analysis exposes and illustr...

Heterogeneity is one of the distinguishing features in spatial econometric models. It is a frequent problem in applied work and can be very damaging for statistical inference. In this paper, we focus on the problems implied by the existence of instabilities in the mechanism of spatial dependence in a spatial lag model, assuming that the other terms of the specification remain stable. We begin t...