Book excerpt: 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.