Otoacoustic emission (OAE) latency data provide important information about several aspects of cochlear mechanics. Time-frequency analysis techniques, euther based on the wavelet transform or on Matching Pursuit algorithms, permit to get accurate estimates of the latency of transient evoked OAEs (TEOAEs). Wavelet estimates of the TEOAE latency of 14 young subjects, recorded at different stimulus levels from 60 to 90 dB pSPL, are used here to test several predictions of transmission line cochlear models. The experimental relation between latency, frequency, and stimulus level, is used to get estimates of cochlear tuning at different stimulus levels, which can be compared with behavioral and other OAE-based estimates.These estimates can be used to get information about the functional form of the cochlear amplifier nonlinearity. The comparison between the TEOAE latency and the auditory brainstem response (ABR) latency may help discriminating between different models for the OAE backward propagation. Wavelet latency and phase-gradient delay may be estimated on the same TEOAE waveforms. The comparison between these two characteristic times permits, in principle, to identify the place-fixed or wave-fixed nature of the TEOAE generation mechanisms.