This paper develops a stochastically-based method of measuring core inflation. The approach exploits the persistent tendency towards high kurtosis evident in the cross-sectional distribution of consumer price changes evident in New Zealand and elsewhere. High kurtosis makes the sample mean a less efficient and less robust estimator of the population, or underlying, mean price change than is an ...

This paper proposes a misspecification-robust iid bootstrap for the generalized method of moment estimators and establishes asymptotic refinements of the symmetric percentile-t bootstrap confidence interval. The paper extends results of Hall and Horowitz (1996) and Andrews (2002). In particular, the proposed method does not involve recentering the moment function in implementing the bootstrap, ...

The Spearman-Kärber method can be used to estimate the threshold value or difference limen in two-alternative forced-choice tasks. This method yields a simple estimator for the difference limen and its standard error, so that both can be calculated with a pocket calculator. In contrast to previous estimators, the present approach does not require any assumptions about the shape of the true unde...

inverse sampling design is generally considered to be appropriate technique when the population is divided into two subpopulations, one of which contains only few units. in this paper, we derive the horvitz-thompson estimator for the population mean under inverse sampling designs, where subpopulation sizes are known. we then introduce an alternative unbiased estimator, corresponding to post-str...

This paper investigates possible spillover effects of the UK minimum wage. The halt in the growth in inequality in the lower half of the wage distribution (as measured by the 50:10 percentile ratio) since the mid 1990s, in contrast to the continued inequality growth in the upper half of the distribution, suggests the possibility of a minimum wage effect and spillover effects on wages above the ...

For J ≥ 2 independent groups, the paper deals with testing the global hypothesis that all J groups have a common population median or identical quantiles, with an emphasis on the quartiles. Classic rank-based methods are sometimes suggested for comparing medians, but it is well known that under general conditions they do not adequately address this goal. Extant methods based on the usual sample...