Alternative definitions of the concentration ellipsoid of a random vector are surveyed, and an extension of the concentration ellipsoid of Darmois is suggested as being the most convenient and natural definition. The advantage of the proposed definition in providing substantially simplified proofs of results in (linear) estimation theory is discussed, and is illustrated by new and short proofs of two key results. A not-so-well-known, but elementary, extremal representation of a nonnegative definite quadratic form, together with the corresponding Cauchy-Schwarẓ-type inequality, is seen to play a crucial role in these proofs.

A unified framework is established for the study of the computation of the distribution function from the characteristic function. A new approach to the proof of Gurland's and Gil-Pelaez's univariate inversion theorem is suggested. A multivariate inversion theorem is then derived using this technique.

We consider the least-squares estimator in a strictly stationary first-order autoregression without an estimated intercept. We study its continuous time asymptotic distribution based on an asymptotic framework where the sampling interval converges to zero as the sample size increases. We derive a momentgenerating function which permits the calculation of percentage points and moments of this asymptotic distribution and assess the adequacy of the approximation to the finite sample distribution. In general, the approximation is excellent for values of the autoregressive parameter near one. We also consider the behavior of the power function of tests based on the normalized leastsquares estimator. Interesting nonmonotonic properties are uncovered. This analysis extends the study of Perron [15] and helps to provide explanations for the finite sample results established by Nankervis and Savin [13].

This paper derives discrete models for estimating systems of both first- and second-order linear differential equations in which derivatives of the exogenous variables appear in addition to their levels.

This paper gives simple nonuniform bounds on the tail areas of the permutation distribution of the usual Student's t-statistic when the observations are independent with symmetric distributions. As opposed to uniform bounds, nonuniform bounds depend on the observed sample. It is shown that the nonuniform bounds proposed are always tighter than uniform exponential bounds previously suggested. The use of the bounds to perform nonparametric t-tests is discussed and numerical examples are presented. Further, the bounds are extended to t-tests in the context of a simple linear regression.

This paper is concerned with deriving formulae for higher order derivatives of exogenous variables for use in estimating the parameters of an open secondorder continuous time model with mixed stock and flow data and first and second order derivatives of exogenous variables which are not observable. This should provide the basis for the future estimation of continuous time models in a range of applied areas using the new Gaussian estimation computer program developed by Nowman [4].

Asymptotic local power analysis has become an important and increasingly used technique in econometrics. This paper reviews the history of local power analysis and delineates the contribution of J.Neyman, E.J.G. Pitman, and G. Noether.