Continuous data arise in most areas of medicine. Familiar clinical examples include blood pressure, ejection fraction, forced expiratory volume in 1 second (FEV1), serum cholesterol, and anthropometric measurements. Methods for analysing continuous data fall into two classes, distinguished by whether or not they make assumptions about the distribution of the data. Theoretical distributions are ...

L ittle has been written on the subject of teaching econometrics. An early exception is an article by Sowey (1983), in which econometrics is defined (p. 257) as “the discipline in which one studies theoretical and practical aspects of applying statistical methods to economic data for the purpose of testing economic theories (represented by carefully constructed models) and of forecasting and co...

Recent researches in econometrics and statistics have gained considerable insights into the use of instrumental variables (IVs) for causal inference. A basic idea is that IVs serve as an experimental handle, the turning of which may change each individual’s treatment status and, through and only through this effect, also change observed outcome. The average difference in observed outcome relati...

Suppose we wish to carry out likelihood based inference but we solely have an unbiased simulation based estimator of the likelihood. We note that unbiasedness is enough when the estimated likelihood is used inside a Metropolis-Hastings algorithm. This result has recently been introduced in statistics literature by Andrieu, Doucet, and Holenstein (2007) and is perhaps surprising given the celebr...

This paper proposes model selection criteria ~MSC! for unconditional moment models using generalized empirical likelihood ~GEL! statistics+ The use of GELstatistics in lieu of J-statistics ~in the spirit of Andrews, 1999, Econometrica 67, 543–564; and Andrews and Lu, 2001, Journal of Econometrics 101, 123–164! leads to an alternative interpretation of the MSCs that emphasizes the common informa...

Economic theory suggests that an extension of the maximum length of entitlement for unemployment benefits increases the duration of unemployment. Empirical results for the reform of the unemployment compensation system in Germany during the 1980s are less clear. The analysis in this paper is motivated by the controversial empirical findings and by recent developments in econometrics for partial...