The present Special Issue collects a number of new contributions both at the theoretical level and in terms of applications in the areas of nonparametric and semiparametric econometric methods. In particular, this collection of papers that cover areas such as developments in local smoothing techniques, splines, series estimators, and wavelets will add to the existing rich literature on these subjects and enhance our ability to use data to test economic hypotheses in a variety of fields, such as financial economics, microeconomics, macroeconomics, labor economics, and economic growth, to name a few.

It is increasingly common for analysts to seek out the opinions of individuals and organizations using attitudinal scales such as degree of satisfaction or importance attached to an issue. Examples include levels of obesity, seriousness of a health condition, attitudes towards service levels, opinions on products, voting intentions, and the degree of clarity of contracts. Ordered choice models provide a relevant methodology for capturing the sources of influence that explain the choice made amongst a set of ordered alternatives. The methods have evolved to a level of sophistication that can allow for heterogeneity in the threshold parameters, in the explanatory variables (through random parameters), and in the decomposition of the residual variance. This book brings together contributions in ordered choice modeling from a number of disciplines, synthesizing developments over the last fifty years, and suggests useful extensions to account for the wide range of sources of influence on choice.