IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/p/ifs/cemmap/37-15.html
   My bibliography  Save this paper

Treatment effects with many covariates and heteroskedasticity

Author

Listed:
  • Matias Cattaneo

    (Institute for Fiscal Studies and University of Michigan)

  • Michael Jansson

    (Institute for Fiscal Studies and Berkeley)

  • Whitney K. Newey

    (Institute for Fiscal Studies and MIT)

Abstract

The linear regression model is widely used in empirical work in Economics. Researchers often include many covariates in their linear model specification in an attempt to control for confounders. We give inference methods that allow for many covariates and heteroskedasticity. Our results are obtained using high-dimensional approximations, where the number of covariates are allowed to grow as fast as the sample size. We find that all of the usual versions of Eicker-White heteroskedasticity consistent standard error estimators for linear models are inconsistent under this asymptotics. We then propose a new heteroskedasticity consistent standard error formula that is fully automatic and robust to both (conditional) heteroskedasticity of unknown form and the inclusion of possibly many covariates. We apply our findings to three settings: (i) parametric linear models with many covariates; (ii) semiparametric semi-linear models with many technical regressors; and (iii) linear panel models with many fixed effects.

Suggested Citation

  • Matias Cattaneo & Michael Jansson & Whitney K. Newey, 2015. "Treatment effects with many covariates and heteroskedasticity," CeMMAP working papers CWP37/15, Centre for Microdata Methods and Practice, Institute for Fiscal Studies.
    • Handle: RePEc:ifs:cemmap:37/15
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: https://www.ifs.org.uk/uploads/cemmap/wps/cwp371515.pdf
    Download Restriction: no
    ---><---

    Other versions of this item:

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. James G. MacKinnon, 2012. "Thirty Years Of Heteroskedasticity-robust Inference," Working Paper 1268, Economics Department, Queen's University.
    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. Holland, Ashley D., 2017. "Penalized spline estimation in the partially linear model," Journal of Multivariate Analysis, Elsevier, vol. 153(C), pages 211-235.
    2. Belloni, Alexandre & Chernozhukov, Victor & Chetverikov, Denis & Fernández-Val, Iván, 2019. "Conditional quantile processes based on series or many regressors," Journal of Econometrics, Elsevier, vol. 213(1), pages 4-29.

    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. Cavaliere, Giuseppe & Nielsen, Morten Ørregaard & Taylor, A.M. Robert, 2015. "Bootstrap score tests for fractional integration in heteroskedastic ARFIMA models, with an application to price dynamics in commodity spot and futures markets," Journal of Econometrics, Elsevier, vol. 187(2), pages 557-579.
    2. Hansen, Bruce E. & Lee, Seojeong, 2019. "Asymptotic theory for clustered samples," Journal of Econometrics, Elsevier, vol. 210(2), pages 268-290.
    3. Cyrus J. DiCiccio & Joseph P. Romano & Michael Wolf, 2016. "Improving weighted least squares inference," ECON - Working Papers 232, Department of Economics - University of Zurich, revised Nov 2017.
    4. Romano, Joseph P. & Wolf, Michael, 2017. "Resurrecting weighted least squares," Journal of Econometrics, Elsevier, vol. 197(1), pages 1-19.
    5. Matias D. Cattaneo & Michael Jansson & Whitney K. Newey, 2018. "Inference in Linear Regression Models with Many Covariates and Heteroscedasticity," Journal of the American Statistical Association, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 113(523), pages 1350-1361, July.
    6. Startz, Richard, 2012. "Bayesian Heteroskedasticity-Robust Standard Errors," University of California at Santa Barbara, Economics Working Paper Series qt69c4x8m9, Department of Economics, UC Santa Barbara.
    7. Anatolyev, Stanislav, 2021. "Mallows criterion for heteroskedastic linear regressions with many regressors," Economics Letters, Elsevier, vol. 203(C).
    8. Guido W. Imbens & Michal Kolesár, 2016. "Robust Standard Errors in Small Samples: Some Practical Advice," The Review of Economics and Statistics, MIT Press, vol. 98(4), pages 701-712, October.
    9. MacKinnon, James G., 2020. "Wild cluster bootstrap confidence intervals," L'Actualité Economique, Société Canadienne de Science Economique, vol. 96(4), pages 721-743, Décembre.
    10. Neil Shephard, 2020. "An estimator for predictive regression: reliable inference for financial economics," Papers 2008.06130, arXiv.org.
    11. James G. MacKinnon & Matthew D. Webb, 2017. "Pitfalls When Estimating Treatment Effects Using Clustered Data," Working Paper 1387, Economics Department, Queen's University.
    12. DiCiccio, Cyrus J. & Romano, Joseph P. & Wolf, Michael, 2019. "Improving weighted least squares inference," Econometrics and Statistics, Elsevier, vol. 10(C), pages 96-119.

    More about this item

    Keywords

    High-dimensional models; linear regression; many regressors; heteroskedasticity; standard errors;
    All these keywords.

    JEL classification:

    • C12 - Mathematical and Quantitative Methods - - Econometric and Statistical Methods and Methodology: General - - - Hypothesis Testing: General
    • C14 - Mathematical and Quantitative Methods - - Econometric and Statistical Methods and Methodology: General - - - Semiparametric and Nonparametric Methods: General
    • C21 - Mathematical and Quantitative Methods - - Single Equation Models; Single Variables - - - Cross-Sectional Models; Spatial Models; Treatment Effect Models

    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:ifs:cemmap:37/15. 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: Emma Hyman (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://edirc.repec.org/data/cmifsuk.html .

    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.