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Some Impossibility Results for Inference With Cluster Dependence with Large Clusters

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  • Denis Kojevnikov
  • Kyungchul Song

Abstract

This paper focuses on a setting with observations having a cluster dependence structure and presents two main impossibility results. First, we show that when there is only one large cluster, i.e., the researcher does not have any knowledge on the dependence structure of the observations, it is not possible to consistently discriminate the mean. When within-cluster observations satisfy the uniform central limit theorem, we also show that a sufficient condition for consistent $\sqrt{n}$-discrimination of the mean is that we have at least two large clusters. This result shows some limitations for inference when we lack information on the dependence structure of observations. Our second result provides a necessary and sufficient condition for the cluster structure that the long run variance is consistently estimable. Our result implies that when there is at least one large cluster, the long run variance is not consistently estimable.

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  • Denis Kojevnikov & Kyungchul Song, 2021. "Some Impossibility Results for Inference With Cluster Dependence with Large Clusters," Papers 2109.03971, arXiv.org, revised Jun 2023.
    • Handle: RePEc:arx:papers:2109.03971
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    References listed on IDEAS

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    1. A. Colin Cameron & Jonah B. Gelbach & Douglas L. Miller, 2008. "Bootstrap-Based Improvements for Inference with Clustered Errors," The Review of Economics and Statistics, MIT Press, vol. 90(3), pages 414-427, August.
    2. Bester, C. Alan & Conley, Timothy G. & Hansen, Christian B., 2011. "Inference with dependent data using cluster covariance estimators," Journal of Econometrics, Elsevier, vol. 165(2), pages 137-151.
    3. Nicholas M. Kiefer & Timothy J. Vogelsang, 2002. "Heteroskedasticity-Autocorrelation Robust Standard Errors Using The Bartlett Kernel Without Truncation," Econometrica, Econometric Society, vol. 70(5), pages 2093-2095, September.
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