Adaptive confidence bands in the nonparametric fixed design regression model

In this note, we consider the problem of the existence of adaptive confidence bands in the fixed design regression model, adapting ideas in Hoffmann and Nickl [(2011), ‘On Adaptive Inference and Confidence Bands’, Annals of Statistics, 39, 2383–2409] to the present case. In the course of the proof, we show that sup-norm adaptive estimators exist as well in the regression setting.     

Does strike insurance matter? Evidence from the airline industry’s mutual aid pact

Despite a conducive environment, airline strike insurance did not significantly affect flight attendants’ and mechanics’ earnings and depressed pilots’ earnings by a barely statistically significant 3 percent. These results cast doubt on previous assertions that the demise of strike insurance, precipitated by the 1978 Airline Deregulation Act, improved unions’ relative bargaining power. Furthermore, the ineffectiveness of one of the most promising strike insurance pacts could explain the small number of such agreements in U.S. industries. The author may be contacted at the Department of Economics, Université du Québec à Montréal, CP 8888 Station A, Montréal, Québec, H3C 3P8, Canada. The author is grateful to Bill Dickens, Denise Jarvinen, Ted Keeler, Jonathan Leonard, James Peoples, Kenneth Train, and Marc Van Audenrode for many helpful comments. The author also thanks the Institute of Transportation Studies at the University of California at Berkeley, and the PAFACC at the Université du Québec à Montréal for generous financial support.     

Mergers and Bargaining in the Airline Industry

ABSTRACT: Using newly collected firm-level data, this paper analyzes the effect of mergers on the earnings and employment of pilots, flight attendants, and mechanics in the US airline industry between 1971 and 1990. The results show that mergers had a significant and largely negative impact on flight attendants’earnings but have a limited impact on mechanics’and none on pilots’earnings. Mergers have no significant direct impact on employment for pilots or mechanics but affected flight attendants’employment negatively. The indirect impact of reduced activity following mergers did lead to an overall negative impact on employment for pilots and significantly increased the magnitude of the effect for flight attendants.