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AbstractThis paper compares a nonparametric generalized least squares (NPGLS) estimator to parametric feasible GLS (FGLS) and variants of heteroscedasticity robust standard error estimators (HRSE) in an applied setting. NPGLS consistently estimates the unknown scedastic function and produces more efficient parameter estimates than HRSE. We apply these various approaches for handling heteroscedasticity to data on professor rankings obtained from RateMyProfessors.com. We find that the statistical significance of key variables differs across seven versions of HRSE, leading to different conclusions, and a standard parametric approach to FGLS suffers from misspecification. NPGLS combines the virtues of both of these parametric approaches.

This paper proposes urbanization as a determinant of government size. As people move to cities, their demand for a more de ned set of regulations, but also for basic health, education, and income standards rises. Our theoretical framework determines how the regional distribution of the population a ects government size. We test this theory on panel data of 175 countries from 1960 to 2010 and two state-level samples from Colombia and Germany. Results demonstrate a strong positive e ect from urbanization on government spending, with a 1 percent increase in the amount of urban citizens leading to a 0.2 percent rise in public expenditure. Our ndings indicate that public sectors may become more important as worldwide urbanization is progressing. This result underlines why government e ectiveness and the quality of public goods provision will be even more important in the future.

Chapter 1. Introduction -- Chapter 2. The Difference Approach to Productivity Measurement and Exact Indicators -- Chapter 3. Efficiency Driven Socio-Technical System Design -- Chapter 4. A Framework for the Assessment and Consolidation of Productivity Stylized Facts -- Chapter 5. Water's Contribution to Agricultural Productivity over Space -- Chapter 6. A Survey of the use of copulas in Stochastic frontier models -- Chapter 7. Does Xistence of Ine ciency Matter to a Neoclassical Xorcist? Some Econometric Issues in Panel Stochastic Frontier Models -- Chapter 8. The two-tier stochastic frontier framework (2TSF): measuring frontiers wherever they may exist -- Chapter 9. Individual Efficient Frontiers in Performance Analysis -- Chapter 10. DEA models without inputs or outputs: A tour de force -- Chapter 11. U.S. Banking in the Post-Crisis Era: New Results from New Methods -- Chapter 12. Room to Move: Why Some Industries Drive the Trade-Specialization Nexus and Others Do Not -- Chapter 13. Expansionary Investment Activities: Assessing Equipment and Buildings in Productivity -- Chapter 14. Applying statistical methods to compare frontiers: Are organic dairy farms better than the conventional?- Chapter 15. Nutrient Use and Precision Agriculture in Corn Production in the United States.