IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/p/lau/crdeep/01.05.html
   My bibliography  Save this paper

Biases of the Ordinary Least Squares and Instrumental Variables Estimators of the Intergenerational Earnings Correlation : Revisited in the Light of Panel Data

Author

Listed:
  • Ramses H. ABUL NAGA

Abstract

The OLS estimator of the intergenerational earnings correlation is biased towards zero, while the instrumental variables estimator is biased upwards. The first of these results arises because of measurement error, while the latter rests on the presumption that the education of the parent family is an invalid instrument. We propose a panel data framework for quantifying the asymptotic biases of these estimators as well as a mis-specification test for the IV estimator. Using US data we estimate the bias of the OLS estimator to be in the order of 10% to 20%, and that of IV to vary between 40% and 60%. Supporting evidence that the IV estimator is inconsistent, in face of the specification test, is however limited, and results are shown to be sensitive to the assumptions underlying the serial correlation in transitory incomes.

Suggested Citation

  • Ramses H. ABUL NAGA, 2001. "Biases of the Ordinary Least Squares and Instrumental Variables Estimators of the Intergenerational Earnings Correlation : Revisited in the Light of Panel Data," Cahiers de Recherches Economiques du Département d'économie 01.05, Université de Lausanne, Faculté des HEC, Département d’économie.
    • Handle: RePEc:lau:crdeep:01.05
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://www.hec.unil.ch/deep/textes/01.05.pdf
    Download Restriction: no
    ---><---

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Dearden, Lorraine & Machin, Stephen & Reed, Howard, 1997. "Intergenerational Mobility in Britain," Economic Journal, Royal Economic Society, vol. 107(440), pages 47-66, January.
    2. Meijer, Erik & Wansbeek, Tom, 2000. "Measurement error in a single regressor," Economics Letters, Elsevier, vol. 69(3), pages 277-284, December.
    3. Solon, Gary, 1999. "Intergenerational mobility in the labor market," Handbook of Labor Economics, in: O. Ashenfelter & D. Card (ed.), Handbook of Labor Economics, edition 1, volume 3, chapter 29, pages 1761-1800, Elsevier.
    4. Christian Schluter, 1998. "Income Dynamics in Germany, the USA and the UK: Evidence from Panel Data," CASE Papers case08, Centre for Analysis of Social Exclusion, LSE.
    5. Ramses ABUL NAGA & Jaya KRISHNAKUMAR, 1999. "Panel Data Estimation of the Intergenerational Correlation of Incomes," Cahiers de Recherches Economiques du Département d'économie 9910, Université de Lausanne, Faculté des HEC, Département d’économie.
    6. Griliches, Zvi & Hausman, Jerry A., 1986. "Errors in variables in panel data," Journal of Econometrics, Elsevier, vol. 31(1), pages 93-118, February.
    7. MaCurdy, Thomas E., 1982. "The use of time series processes to model the error structure of earnings in a longitudinal data analysis," Journal of Econometrics, Elsevier, vol. 18(1), pages 83-114, January.
    8. Ramses H. ABUL NAGA, 2000. "Galtonian Regression of Intergenerational Income Linkages : Biased Procedures, a New Estimator and Mean-Square Error Comparisons," Cahiers de Recherches Economiques du Département d'économie 00.13, Université de Lausanne, Faculté des HEC, Département d’économie.
    9. repec:bla:revinw:v:36:y:1990:i:2:p:115-27 is not listed on IDEAS
    10. Ramses H. ABUL NAGA, 1998. "Estimating the Intergenerational Correlation of Incomes : An Errors in Variables Framework," Cahiers de Recherches Economiques du Département d'économie 9812, Université de Lausanne, Faculté des HEC, Département d’économie.
    11. Solon, Gary, 1992. "Intergenerational Income Mobility in the United States," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 82(3), pages 393-408, June.
    12. Bowles, Samuel, 1972. "Schooling and Inequality from Generation to Generation," Journal of Political Economy, University of Chicago Press, vol. 80(3), pages 219-251, Part II, .
    13. Christian Schluter, 1998. "Income Dynamics in Germany, the USA and the UK: Evidence from Panel Data," CASE Papers 008, Centre for Analysis of Social Exclusion, LSE.
    14. Zimmerman, David J, 1992. "Regression toward Mediocrity in Economic Stature," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 82(3), pages 409-429, June.
    15. Bjorklund, Anders & Jantti, Markus, 1997. "Intergenerational Income Mobility in Sweden Compared to the United States," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 87(5), pages 1009-1018, December.
    16. Schluter, Christian, 1998. "Income dynamics in Germany, the USA and the UK: evidence from panel data," LSE Research Online Documents on Economics 6527, London School of Economics and Political Science, LSE Library.
    17. Abowd, John M & Card, David, 1989. "On the Covariance Structure of Earnings and Hours Changes," Econometrica, Econometric Society, vol. 57(2), pages 411-445, March.
    18. Jere R. Behrman & Paul Taubman, 1990. "The Intergenerational Correlation Between Children'S Adult Earnings And Their Parents' Income: Results From The Michigan Panel Survey Of Income Dynamics," Review of Income and Wealth, International Association for Research in Income and Wealth, vol. 36(2), pages 115-127, June.
    19. repec:dgr:rugsom:00f14 is not listed on IDEAS
    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. Ramses Abul Naga & Frank Cowell, 2002. "Intergenerational Mobility in Britain: Revisiting the Prediction Approach of Dearden, Machin and Reed," Cahiers de Recherches Economiques du Département d'économie 02.15, Université de Lausanne, Faculté des HEC, Département d’économie.

    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. Ramses H. ABUL NAGA, 2000. "Galtonian Regression of Intergenerational Income Linkages : Biased Procedures, a New Estimator and Mean-Square Error Comparisons," Cahiers de Recherches Economiques du Département d'économie 00.13, Université de Lausanne, Faculté des HEC, Département d’économie.
    2. Ramses Abul Naga, 2008. "Biases of the ordinary least squares and instrumental variables estimators of the intergenerational earnings elasticity: Revisited in the light of panel data," The Journal of Economic Inequality, Springer;Society for the Study of Economic Inequality, vol. 6(4), pages 323-350, December.
    3. Ramses H. ABUL NAGA, 1998. "Estimating the Intergenerational Correlation of Incomes : An Errors in Variables Framework," Cahiers de Recherches Economiques du Département d'économie 9812, Université de Lausanne, Faculté des HEC, Département d’économie.
    4. Ramses ABUL NAGA & Jaya KRISHNAKUMAR, 1999. "Panel Data Estimation of the Intergenerational Correlation of Incomes," Cahiers de Recherches Economiques du Département d'économie 9910, Université de Lausanne, Faculté des HEC, Département d’économie.
    5. Arnaud Lefranc & Alain Trannoy, 2005. "Intergenerational earnings mobility in France: Is France more mobile than the U.S.?," Annals of Economics and Statistics, GENES, issue 78, pages 57-77.
    6. Martin Nybom & Jan Stuhler, 2016. "Heterogeneous Income Profiles and Lifecycle Bias in Intergenerational Mobility Estimation," Journal of Human Resources, University of Wisconsin Press, vol. 51(1), pages 239-268.
    7. Robert Lucas & Sari Kerr, 2013. "Intergenerational income immobility in Finland: contrasting roles for parental earnings and family income," Journal of Population Economics, Springer;European Society for Population Economics, vol. 26(3), pages 1057-1094, July.
    8. María Cervini-Plá, 2015. "Intergenerational Earnings and Income Mobility in Spain," Review of Income and Wealth, International Association for Research in Income and Wealth, vol. 61(4), pages 812-828, December.
    9. Miles Corak, 2006. "Do Poor Children Become Poor Adults? Lessons from a Cross-Country Comparison of Generational Earnings Mobility," Research on Economic Inequality, in: Dynamics of Inequality and Poverty, pages 143-188, Emerald Group Publishing Limited.
    10. Grawe, Nathan D., 2003. "Life Cycle Bias in the Estimation of Intergenerational Earnings Persistence," Analytical Studies Branch Research Paper Series 2003207e, Statistics Canada, Analytical Studies Branch.
    11. Sayema H. Bidisha & Anupam Das & Adian A. McFarlane, 2013. "Microeconometric analysis of earnings mobility of immigrants and ethnic minorities: evidence from the UK [Mikroökonometrische Analyse der Einkommensmobilität zwischen Generationen bei Immigranten u," Journal for Labour Market Research, Springer;Institute for Employment Research/ Institut für Arbeitsmarkt- und Berufsforschung (IAB), vol. 46(1), pages 35-42, March.
    12. Ferreira, Sergio Guimarães & Veloso, Fernando A., 2006. "Intergenerational Mobility of Wages in Brazil," Brazilian Review of Econometrics, Sociedade Brasileira de Econometria - SBE, vol. 26(2), November.
    13. Maia Güell & José V. Rodriguez Mora & Chris Telmer, 2007. "Intergenerational mobility and the informative content of surnames," Economics Working Papers 1042, Department of Economics and Business, Universitat Pompeu Fabra.
    14. Markus Jäntti & Juho Saari & Juhana Vartiainen, 2006. "Growth and Equity in Finland," WIDER Working Paper Series DP2006-06, World Institute for Development Economic Research (UNU-WIDER).
    15. John Ermisch & Marco Francesconi & Thomas Siedler, 2004. "Intergenerational Economic Mobility and Assortative Mating," Discussion Papers of DIW Berlin 448, DIW Berlin, German Institute for Economic Research.
    16. P. Jenkins, Stephen & Jäntti, Markus, 2013. "Income mobility," ISER Working Paper Series 2013-23, Institute for Social and Economic Research.
    17. McIntosh, James & Munk, Martin D., 2009. "Social class, family background, and intergenerational mobility," European Economic Review, Elsevier, vol. 53(1), pages 107-117, January.
    18. Grawe, Nathan D., 2006. "Lifecycle bias in estimates of intergenerational earnings persistence," Labour Economics, Elsevier, vol. 13(5), pages 551-570, October.
    19. Eisenhauer, Philipp & Pfeiffer, Friedhelm, 2008. "Assessing intergenerational earnings persistence among German workers," Zeitschrift für ArbeitsmarktForschung - Journal for Labour Market Research, Institut für Arbeitsmarkt- und Berufsforschung (IAB), Nürnberg [Institute for Employment Research, Nuremberg, Germany], vol. 41(2/3), pages 119-137.
    20. Cheti Nicoletti & Marco Francesconi, 2006. "Intergenerational mobility and sample selection in short panels," Journal of Applied Econometrics, John Wiley & Sons, Ltd., vol. 21(8), pages 1265-1293.

    More about this item

    Keywords

    intergenerational mobility; measurement error; panel data; biased estimation;
    All these keywords.

    JEL classification:

    • I3 - Health, Education, and Welfare - - Welfare, Well-Being, and Poverty
    • J62 - Labor and Demographic Economics - - Mobility, Unemployment, Vacancies, and Immigrant Workers - - - Job, Occupational and Intergenerational Mobility; Promotion

    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:lau:crdeep:01.05. 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: Christina Seld (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://edirc.repec.org/data/deelsch.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.