Intermediate Statistics and Econometrics: A Comparative Approach

The standard introductory texts to mathematical statistics leave the Bayesian approach to be taught later in advanced topics courses -- giving students the impression that Bayesian statistics provide but a few techniques appropriate in only special circumstances. Nothing could be further from the truth, argues Dale Poirier, who has developed a course for teaching comparatively both the classical and the Bayesian approaches to econometrics. Poirier's text provides a thoroughly modern, self-contained, comprehensive, and accessible treatment of the probability and statistical foundations of econometrics with special emphasis on the linear regression model. Written primarily for advanced undergraduate and graduate students who are pursuing research careers in economics, Intermediate Statistics and Econometrics offers a broad perspective, bringing together a great deal of diverse material. Its comparative approach, emphasis on regression and prediction, and numerous exercises and references provide a solid foundation for subsequent courses in econometrics and will prove a valuable resource to many nonspecialists who want to update their quantitative skills. The introduction closes with an example of a real-world data set -- the Challenger space shuttle disaster -- that motivates much of the text's theoretical discussion. The ten chapters that follow cover basic concepts, special distributions, distributions of functions of random variables, sampling theory, estimation, hypothesis testing, prediction, and the linear regression model. Appendixes contain a review of matrix algebra, computation, and statistical tables.