This paper brings some empirical evidence to the construction of a more disaggregated view of disequilibrium. Individual data on firms collected by INSEE through periodic Business Surveys are used to construct the distribution of firms over the four possible disequilibrium regimes. Then the behavior of this distribution over time is analyzed by estimating dynamic conditional logit models on panel data.

For many years, social scientists have been interested in obtaining testable definitions of causality (Granger 1969, Sims 1972). Recent works include those of Chamberlain (1982) and Florens and Mouchart (1982). The present paper first clarifies the results of these latter papers by considering a unifying definition of noncausality. Then, log-likelihood ratio (LR) tests for noncausality are derived for qualitative panel data under the minimal assumption that one series is Markov. LR tests for the Markov property are also obtained. Both test statistics have closed forms. These tests thus provide a readily applicable procedure for testing noncausality on qualitative panel data. Finally, the tests are applied to French Business Survey data in order to test the hypothesis that price changes from period to period are strictly exogenous to disequilibria appearing within periods.

In view of the non-identification of the first-price auction model with risk-averse bidders, this paper proposes some parametric identifying restrictions and a semiparametric estimator for the risk aversion parameter(s) and the latent distribution of private values. Specifically, we exploit heterogeneity across auctioned objects to establish semiparametric identification under a conditional quantile restriction of the bidders' private value distribution and a parameterization of the bidders' utility function. We develop a multistep semiparametric method and we show that our semiparametric estimator of the utility function parameter(s) converges at the optimal rate, which is slower than the parametric one but independent of the dimension of the exogenous variables thereby avoiding the curse of dimensionality. We then consider various extensions including a binding reserve price, affiliation among private values, and asymmetric bidders. The method is illustrated on U.S. Forest Service timber sales, and bidders' risk neutrality is rejected.