ECONOMETRIC ANALYSIS OF PANEL DATA: EDITORIAL INTRODUCTION

Abstract

During 2007, the Singapore Economic Review invited submissions of research papers for consideration to be collected in a Special Issue on: The Theory and Practice of the Econometric Analysis of Panel Data. More in particular, papers were solicited advancing the understanding of the accuracy and adequacy of econometric inference obtained from panel data analysis, or producing such inference relating to economic or general social issues by analyzing panel data preferably (but not necessarily) on South-East Asia at the country, sub-regional, or regional level. From the submitted papers, a selection was made covering many of the divergent aspects of advanced panel data analysis. These papers were thoroughly refereed and this is the resulting special issue. It contains contributions with applications addressing issues in macro, micro, and financial economics and some focus also on the further development and understanding of the techniques of panel data analysis. Three of the eight papers analyze data on South-East Asia. The majority of the articles in this issue concern the analysis of standard panel data, constituting repeated observations in time on a cross-section of subjects. For some of these studies, the time-series sample size is relatively large or about equal in size to the cross-section sample, whereas others focus on the typical micro panel in which the number of time-series observations is very small and the cross-section sample size is relatively large. Mostly, the available panel data sets are unbalanced, meaning that not all cross-section units have been observed over exactly the same time period. In two papers, the panel nature of the analyzed data is less standard. They concern the series of bids during a large number of auctions, and the individual members of a large number of households. It seems fair to say that this collection of papers demonstrates abundantly how ubiquitous and diverse panel data are, how challenging and rewarding their