Knowledge that Transforms

We develop a √n-consistent and asymptotically normal estimator of the parameters (regression coefficients and threshold points) of a semiparametric ordered response model under the assumption of independence of errors and regressors. The independence assumption implies shift restrictions allowing identification of threshold points up to location and scale. The estimator is useful in various applications, particularly in new product demand forecasting from survey data subject to systematic misreporting. We apply the estimator to assess exaggeration bias in survey data on demand for a new telecommunications service.

Evidence suggests that municipal water utility administrators in the western US price water significantly below its marginal cost and, in so doing, inefficiently exploit aquifer stocks and induce social surplus losses. This paper empirically identifies the objective function of those managers, measures the deadweight losses resulting from their price-discounting decisions, and recovers the efficient water pricing policy function from counterfactual experiments. In doing so, the estimation uses a “continuous-but-constrained- control” version of a nested fixed-point algorithm in order to measure the important intertemporal consequences of groundwater pricing decisions.

Abstract. Tests based on the quantile regression process can be formulated like the classical Kolmogorov-Smirnov and Cramer-von-Mises tests of goodness-of-t employing the theory of Bessel processes as in Kiefer (1959). However, it is fre-quently desirable to formulate hypotheses involving unknown nuisance parameters, thereby jeopardizing the distribution free character of these tests. We characterize this situation as \ he Durbin problem " since it was posed in Durbin (1973), for parametric empirical processes. In this paper we consider an approach to the Durbin problem involving a mar-tingale transformation of the parametric empirical process suggested by Khmaladze (1981) and show that it can be adapted to a wide variety of inference problems involving the quantile regression process. In particular, we suggest new tests of the location shift and location-scale shift models that underlie much of classical econometric inference. The methods are illustrated with a reanalysis of data on unemployment durations from the Pennsylvania Reemployment Bonus Experiments. The Pennsylvania ex-periments, conducted in 1988-89, were designed to test the ecacy of cash bonuses paid for early reemployment in shortening the duration of insured unemployment spells. 1.

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Liberalization of infrastructure industries presents classic economic issues about how organization and procedure affect market performance. These issues are examined in wholesale power markets. The perspective from game theory complements standard economic theory to examine effects on efficiency and incentives.