IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/p/arx/papers/2005.10314.html
   My bibliography  Save this paper

On the Nuisance of Control Variables in Regression Analysis

Author

Listed:
  • Paul Hunermund
  • Beyers Louw

Abstract

Control variables are included in regression analyses to estimate the causal effect of a treatment on an outcome. In this paper, we argue that the estimated effect sizes of controls are unlikely to have a causal interpretation themselves, though. This is because even valid controls are possibly endogenous and represent a combination of several different causal mechanisms operating jointly on the outcome, which is hard to interpret theoretically. Therefore, we recommend refraining from interpreting marginal effects of controls and focusing on the main variables of interest, for which a plausible identification argument can be established. To prevent erroneous managerial or policy implications, coefficients of control variables should be clearly marked as not having a causal interpretation or omitted from regression tables altogether. Moreover, we advise against using control variable estimates for subsequent theory building and meta-analyses.

Suggested Citation

  • Paul Hunermund & Beyers Louw, 2020. "On the Nuisance of Control Variables in Regression Analysis," Papers 2005.10314, arXiv.org, revised Jan 2024.
  • Handle: RePEc:arx:papers:2005.10314
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://arxiv.org/pdf/2005.10314
    File Function: Latest version
    Download Restriction: no
    ---><---

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Angrist, Joshua D, 1990. "Lifetime Earnings and the Vietnam Era Draft Lottery: Evidence from Social Security Administrative Records: Errata," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 80(5), pages 1284-1286, December.
    2. Angrist, Joshua D, 1990. "Lifetime Earnings and the Vietnam Era Draft Lottery: Evidence from Social Security Administrative Records," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 80(3), pages 313-336, June.
    3. Carlos Cinelli & Chad Hazlett, 2020. "Making sense of sensitivity: extending omitted variable bias," Journal of the Royal Statistical Society Series B, Royal Statistical Society, vol. 82(1), pages 39-67, February.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Citations

    Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
    as


    Cited by:

    1. Rigoberto Lopez & Keenan Marchesi & Sandro Steinbach, 2024. "Dollar store expansion and independent grocery retailer contraction," Applied Economic Perspectives and Policy, John Wiley & Sons, vol. 46(2), pages 514-533, June.
    2. van Ittersum, Koert & van der Heide, Martine T. & Holtrop, Niels & Bijmolt, Tammo H.A. & van Doorn, Jenny, 2024. "Healthy shopping dynamics: The healthiness of sequential grocery choices," Journal of Retailing, Elsevier, vol. 100(1), pages 24-40.
    3. Roulleau-Pasdeloup, Jordan, 2020. "A Puncher’s chance: Expected gain and risk taking in a market for superstars," Labour Economics, Elsevier, vol. 66(C).
    4. Testa, Alexander & Lee, Jacqueline, 2021. "Drug overdose death rates and criminal sentencing of federal drug offenders in the United States," Journal of Criminal Justice, Elsevier, vol. 74(C).
    5. Frank Agyire-Tettey & Derek Asuman & Charles Godfred Ackah & Antoinette Tsiboe-Darko, 2021. "Multidimensional Child Poverty in Ghana: Measurements, Determinants, and Inequalities," Child Indicators Research, Springer;The International Society of Child Indicators (ISCI), vol. 14(3), pages 957-979, June.

    Most related items

    These are the items that most often cite the same works as this one and are cited by the same works as this one.
    1. Dautović, Ernest & Gambacorta, Leonardo & Reghezza, Alessio, 2023. "Supervisory policy stimulus: evidence from the euro area dividend recommendation," Working Paper Series 2796, European Central Bank.
    2. Akresh, Richard & Lucchetti, Leonardo & Thirumurthy, Harsha, 2012. "Wars and child health: Evidence from the Eritrean–Ethiopian conflict," Journal of Development Economics, Elsevier, vol. 99(2), pages 330-340.
    3. Puhani, Patrick A. & Sterrenberg, Margret K., 2021. "Effects of Mandatory Military Service on Wages and Other Socioeconomic Outcomes," Hannover Economic Papers (HEP) dp-684, Leibniz Universität Hannover, Wirtschaftswissenschaftliche Fakultät.
    4. Jinhyun Lee, 2013. "A Consistent Nonparametric Bootstrap Test of Exogeneity," Discussion Paper Series, School of Economics and Finance 201316, School of Economics and Finance, University of St Andrews.
    5. repec:hal:wpspec:info:hdl:2441/5rkqqmvrn4tl22s9mc4b6ga2g is not listed on IDEAS
    6. Torun, Huzeyfe, 2019. "Ex-ante labor market effects of compulsory military service," Journal of Comparative Economics, Elsevier, vol. 47(1), pages 90-110.
    7. Muhammad Asali, 2017. "Military Service and Future Earnings Revisited," Working Papers 005-17 JEL Codes: J24, J3, International School of Economics at TSU, Tbilisi, Republic of Georgia.
    8. Poutvaara, Panu & Wagener, Andreas, 2007. "To draft or not to draft? Inefficiency, generational incidence, and political economy of military conscription," European Journal of Political Economy, Elsevier, vol. 23(4), pages 975-987, December.
    9. Katarina Keller & Panu Poutvaara & Andreas Wagener, 2009. "Does Military Draft Discourage Enrollment in Higher Education? Evidence from OECD Countries," CESifo Working Paper Series 2838, CESifo.
    10. Xintong Wang & Carlos A. Flores & Alfonso Flores-Lagunes, 2020. "The Effects of Vietnam-Era Military Service on the Long-Term Health of Veterans: A Bounds Analysis," Center for Policy Research Working Papers 234, Center for Policy Research, Maxwell School, Syracuse University.
    11. Angrist, Joshua D. & Chen, Stacey H. & Frandsen, Brigham R., 2010. "Did Vietnam veterans get sicker in the 1990s? The complicated effects of military service on self-reported health," Journal of Public Economics, Elsevier, vol. 94(11-12), pages 824-837, December.
    12. Frank Hubers & Dinand Webbink, 2015. "The long-term effects of military conscription on educational attainment and wages," IZA Journal of Labor Economics, Springer;Forschungsinstitut zur Zukunft der Arbeit GmbH (IZA), vol. 4(1), pages 1-16, December.
    13. Imbens, Guido W & Angrist, Joshua D, 1994. "Identification and Estimation of Local Average Treatment Effects," Econometrica, Econometric Society, vol. 62(2), pages 467-475, March.
    14. Kadir Atalay & Garry F. Barrett & Peter Siminski, 2019. "Pension incentives and the joint retirement of couples: evidence from two natural experiments," Journal of Population Economics, Springer;European Society for Population Economics, vol. 32(3), pages 735-767, July.
    15. DiTraglia, Francis J. & García-Jimeno, Camilo, 2019. "Identifying the effect of a mis-classified, binary, endogenous regressor," Journal of Econometrics, Elsevier, vol. 209(2), pages 376-390.
    16. Tim Johnson & Dalton Conley, 2019. "Military Service and Public Sector Employment: Birthdates Called in the Vietnam Draft Lotteries Appear Excessively in the Population of Civilian U.S. Federal Personnel Records," NBER Working Papers 25859, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    17. David S. Lee & Thomas Lemieux, 2009. "Regression Discontinuity Designs In Economics," Working Papers 1118, Princeton University, Department of Economics, Industrial Relations Section..
    18. Vincent Aidan O'Sullivan, 2016. "The effect of military service on earnings in Britain," Working Papers 125437295, Lancaster University Management School, Economics Department.
    19. Torun, Huzeyfe & Tumen, Semih, 2016. "The effects of compulsory military service exemption on education and labor market outcomes: Evidence from a natural experiment," Economics of Education Review, Elsevier, vol. 54(C), pages 16-35.
    20. Shantanu Gupta & Zachary C. Lipton & David Childers, 2021. "Efficient Online Estimation of Causal Effects by Deciding What to Observe," Papers 2108.09265, arXiv.org, revised Oct 2021.
    21. Bagues, Manuel & Roth, Christopher, 2020. "Interregional Contact and National Identity," CAGE Online Working Paper Series 526, Competitive Advantage in the Global Economy (CAGE).

    More about this item

    NEP fields

    This paper has been announced in the following NEP Reports:

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:arx:papers:2005.10314. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    If CitEc recognized a bibliographic reference but did not link an item in RePEc to it, you can help with this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: arXiv administrators (email available below). General contact details of provider: http://arxiv.org/ .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.