IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/p/pen/papers/14-045.html
   My bibliography  Save this paper

Using Invalid Instruments on Purpose: Focused Moment Selection and Averaging for GMM, Second Version

Author

Listed:
  • Francis J. DiTraglia

    (Department of Economics, University of Pennsylvania)

Abstract

In finite samples, the use of a slightly endogenous but highly relevant instrument can reduce mean-squared error (MSE). Building on this observation, I propose a moment selection criterion for GMM in which moment conditions are chosen based on the MSE of their associated estimators rather than their validity: the focused moment selection criterion (FMSC). I then show how the framework used to derive the FMSC can address the problem of inference post-moment selection. Treating post-selection estimators as a special case of moment-averaging, in which estimators based on different moment sets are given data-dependent weights, I propose a simulation-based procedure to construct valid confidence intervals for a variety of formal and informal moment-selection and averaging procedures. Both the FMSC and confidence interval procedure perform well in simulations. I conclude with an empirical example examining the effect of instrument selection on the estimated relationship between malaria transmission and income.

Suggested Citation

  • Francis J. DiTraglia, 2011. "Using Invalid Instruments on Purpose: Focused Moment Selection and Averaging for GMM, Second Version," PIER Working Paper Archive 14-045, Penn Institute for Economic Research, Department of Economics, University of Pennsylvania, revised 09 Dec 2014.
    • Handle: RePEc:pen:papers:14-045
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: https://economics.sas.upenn.edu/sites/default/files/filevault/14-045.pdf
    Download Restriction: no
    ---><---

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Matei Demetrescu & Uwe Hassler & Vladimir Kuzin, 2011. "Pitfalls of post-model-selection testing: experimental quantification," Empirical Economics, Springer, vol. 40(2), pages 359-372, April.
    2. Kai Carstensen & Erich Gundlach, 2006. "The Primacy of Institutions Reconsidered: Direct Income Effects of Malaria Prevalence," The World Bank Economic Review, World Bank, vol. 20(3), pages 309-339.
    3. Leeb, Hannes & Potscher, Benedikt M., 2008. "Sparse estimators and the oracle property, or the return of Hodges' estimator," Journal of Econometrics, Elsevier, vol. 142(1), pages 201-211, January.
    4. McCloskey, Adam, 2017. "Bonferroni-based size-correction for nonstandard testing problems," Journal of Econometrics, Elsevier, vol. 200(1), pages 17-35.
    5. Easterly, William & Levine, Ross, 2003. "Tropics, germs, and crops: how endowments influence economic development," Journal of Monetary Economics, Elsevier, vol. 50(1), pages 3-39, January.
    6. Phillips, P C B, 1980. "The Exact Distribution of Instrumental Variable Estimators in an Equation Containing n + 1 Endogenous Variables," Econometrica, Econometric Society, vol. 48(4), pages 861-878, May.
    7. Xiaohong Chen & David T. Jacho-Chávez & Oliver Linton, 2009. "An Alternative Way of ComputingEfficient Instrumental VariableEstimators," STICERD - Econometrics Paper Series 536, Suntory and Toyota International Centres for Economics and Related Disciplines, LSE.
    8. Hjort N.L. & Claeskens G., 2003. "Frequentist Model Average Estimators," Journal of the American Statistical Association, American Statistical Association, vol. 98, pages 879-899, January.
    9. Donald W. K. Andrews, 1999. "Consistent Moment Selection Procedures for Generalized Method of Moments Estimation," Econometrica, Econometric Society, vol. 67(3), pages 543-564, May.
    10. Jeffrey D. Sachs, 2003. "Institutions Don't Rule: Direct Effects of Geography on Per Capita Income," NBER Working Papers 9490, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    11. Patrik Guggenberger & Gitanjali Kumar, 2012. "On the size distortion of tests after an overidentifying restrictions pretest," Journal of Applied Econometrics, John Wiley & Sons, Ltd., vol. 27(7), pages 1138-1160, November.
    12. Daron Acemoglu & Simon Johnson & James A. Robinson, 2001. "The Colonial Origins of Comparative Development: An Empirical Investigation," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 91(5), pages 1369-1401, December.
    13. Eddelbuettel, Dirk & Francois, Romain, 2011. "Rcpp: Seamless R and C++ Integration," Journal of Statistical Software, Foundation for Open Access Statistics, vol. 40(i08).
    14. Hong, Han & Preston, Bruce & Shum, Matthew, 2003. "Generalized Empirical Likelihood–Based Model Selection Criteria For Moment Condition Models," Econometric Theory, Cambridge University Press, vol. 19(6), pages 923-943, December.
    15. Aart Kraay, 2012. "Instrumental variables regressions with uncertain exclusion restrictions: a Bayesian approach," Journal of Applied Econometrics, John Wiley & Sons, Ltd., vol. 27(1), pages 108-128, January.
    16. Dani Rodrik & Arvind Subramanian & Francesco Trebbi, 2004. "Institutions Rule: The Primacy of Institutions Over Geography and Integration in Economic Development," Journal of Economic Growth, Springer, vol. 9(2), pages 131-165, June.
    17. Kabaila, Paul & Leeb, Hannes, 2006. "On the Large-Sample Minimal Coverage Probability of Confidence Intervals After Model Selection," Journal of the American Statistical Association, American Statistical Association, vol. 101, pages 619-629, June.
    18. Claeskens, Gerda & Hjort, Nils Lid, 2008. "Minimizing Average Risk In Regression Models," Econometric Theory, Cambridge University Press, vol. 24(2), pages 493-527, April.
    19. Berkowitz, Daniel & Caner, Mehmet & Fang, Ying, 2012. "The validity of instruments revisited," Journal of Econometrics, Elsevier, vol. 166(2), pages 255-266.
    20. Andrews, Donald W. K. & Lu, Biao, 2001. "Consistent model and moment selection procedures for GMM estimation with application to dynamic panel data models," Journal of Econometrics, Elsevier, vol. 101(1), pages 123-164, March.
    21. Donald, Stephen G & Newey, Whitney K, 2001. "Choosing the Number of Instruments," Econometrica, Econometric Society, vol. 69(5), pages 1161-1191, September.
    22. Eddelbuettel, Dirk & Sanderson, Conrad, 2014. "RcppArmadillo: Accelerating R with high-performance C++ linear algebra," Computational Statistics & Data Analysis, Elsevier, vol. 71(C), pages 1054-1063.
    23. Gerda Claeskens & Christophe Croux & Johan Van Kerckhoven, 2006. "Variable Selection for Logistic Regression Using a Prediction-Focused Information Criterion," Biometrics, The International Biometric Society, vol. 62(4), pages 972-979, December.
    24. Xiao, Zhiguo, 2010. "The weighted method of moments approach for moment condition models," Economics Letters, Elsevier, vol. 107(2), pages 183-186, May.
    25. Guido Kuersteiner & Ryo Okui, 2010. "Constructing Optimal Instruments by First-Stage Prediction Averaging," Econometrica, Econometric Society, vol. 78(2), pages 697-718, March.
    26. Andrews, Donald W.K., 1992. "Generic Uniform Convergence," Econometric Theory, Cambridge University Press, vol. 8(2), pages 241-257, June.
    27. Yuhong Yang, 2005. "Can the strengths of AIC and BIC be shared? A conflict between model indentification and regression estimation," Biometrika, Biometrika Trust, vol. 92(4), pages 937-950, December.
    28. Xu Cheng & Zhipeng Liao, 2011. "Select the Valid and Relevant Moments: An Information-Based LASSO for GMM with Many Moments, Second Version," PIER Working Paper Archive 13-062, Penn Institute for Economic Research, Department of Economics, University of Pennsylvania, revised 21 Oct 2013.
    29. Leeb, Hannes & Pötscher, Benedikt M., 2005. "Model Selection And Inference: Facts And Fiction," Econometric Theory, Cambridge University Press, vol. 21(1), pages 21-59, February.
    30. Timothy G. Conley & Christian B. Hansen & Peter E. Rossi, 2012. "Plausibly Exogenous," The Review of Economics and Statistics, MIT Press, vol. 94(1), pages 260-272, February.
    31. Guggenberger, Patrik, 2012. "On The Asymptotic Size Distortion Of Tests When Instruments Locally Violate The Exogeneity Assumption," Econometric Theory, Cambridge University Press, vol. 28(2), pages 387-421, April.
    32. Kabaila, Paul, 1998. "Valid Confidence Intervals In Regression After Variable Selection," Econometric Theory, Cambridge University Press, vol. 14(4), pages 463-482, August.
    33. Liao, Zhipeng, 2013. "Adaptive Gmm Shrinkage Estimation With Consistent Moment Selection," Econometric Theory, Cambridge University Press, vol. 29(5), pages 857-904, October.
    34. K. Newey, Whitney, 1985. "Generalized method of moments specification testing," Journal of Econometrics, Elsevier, vol. 29(3), pages 229-256, September.
    35. Schorfheide, Frank, 2005. "VAR forecasting under misspecification," Journal of Econometrics, Elsevier, vol. 128(1), pages 99-136, September.
    36. Alastair R. Hall & Fernanda P. M. Peixe, 2003. "A Consistent Method for the Selection of Relevant Instruments," Econometric Reviews, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 22(3), pages 269-287, January.
    37. Judge, George G. & Mittelhammer, Ron C., 2007. "Estimation and inference in the case of competing sets of estimating equations," Journal of Econometrics, Elsevier, vol. 138(2), pages 513-531, June.
    38. Donald, Stephen G. & Imbens, Guido W. & Newey, Whitney K., 2009. "Choosing instrumental variables in conditional moment restriction models," Journal of Econometrics, Elsevier, vol. 152(1), pages 28-36, September.
    39. Xu Cheng & Zhipeng Liao & Ruoyao Shi, 2013. "Uniform Asymptotic Risk of Averaging GMM Estimator Robust to Misspecification, Second Version," PIER Working Paper Archive 15-017, Penn Institute for Economic Research, Department of Economics, University of Pennsylvania, revised 25 Mar 2015.
    40. Guggenberger, Patrik, 2010. "The Impact Of A Hausman Pretest On The Asymptotic Size Of A Hypothesis Test," Econometric Theory, Cambridge University Press, vol. 26(2), pages 369-382, April.
    41. Leeb, Hannes & Pötscher, Benedikt M., 2012. "Testing in the Presence of Nuisance Parameters: Some Comments on Tests Post-Model-Selection and Random Critical Values," MPRA Paper 41459, University Library of Munich, Germany.
    42. Claeskens G. & Hjort N.L., 2003. "The Focused Information Criterion," Journal of the American Statistical Association, American Statistical Association, vol. 98, pages 900-916, January.
    43. Andrews, Donald W.K., 1988. "Laws of Large Numbers for Dependent Non-Identically Distributed Random Variables," Econometric Theory, Cambridge University Press, vol. 4(3), pages 458-467, December.
    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. Xu Cheng & Zhipeng Liao & Ruoyao Shi, 2013. "Uniform Asymptotic Risk of Averaging GMM Estimator Robust to Misspecification, Second Version," PIER Working Paper Archive 15-017, Penn Institute for Economic Research, Department of Economics, University of Pennsylvania, revised 25 Mar 2015.
    2. Bruce E. Hansen, 2017. "Stein-like 2SLS estimator," Econometric Reviews, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 36(6-9), pages 840-852, October.
    3. Hansen, Bruce E., 2016. "Efficient shrinkage in parametric models," Journal of Econometrics, Elsevier, vol. 190(1), pages 115-132.

    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. DiTraglia, Francis J., 2016. "Using invalid instruments on purpose: Focused moment selection and averaging for GMM," Journal of Econometrics, Elsevier, vol. 195(2), pages 187-208.
    2. Francis DiTraglia, 2011. "Using Invalid Instruments on Purpose: Focused Moment Selection and Averaging for GMM, Second Version," PIER Working Paper Archive 15-027, Penn Institute for Economic Research, Department of Economics, University of Pennsylvania, revised 10 Aug 2015.
    3. Cheng, Xu & Liao, Zhipeng, 2015. "Select the valid and relevant moments: An information-based LASSO for GMM with many moments," Journal of Econometrics, Elsevier, vol. 186(2), pages 443-464.
    4. Xu Cheng & Zhipeng Liao, 2012. "Select the Valid and Relevant Moments: A One-Step Procedure for GMM with Many Moments," PIER Working Paper Archive 12-045, Penn Institute for Economic Research, Department of Economics, University of Pennsylvania.
    5. Byunghoon Kang, 2018. "Higher Order Approximation of IV Estimators with Invalid Instruments," Working Papers 257105320, Lancaster University Management School, Economics Department.
    6. Minsu Chang & Francis J. DiTraglia, 2020. "A Generalized Focused Information Criterion for GMM," Papers 2011.07085, arXiv.org.
    7. Ruoyao Shi & Zhipeng Liao, 2018. "An Averaging GMM Estimator Robust to Misspecification," Working Papers 201803, University of California at Riverside, Department of Economics.
    8. Alastair R. Hall, 2015. "Econometricians Have Their Moments: GMM at 32," The Economic Record, The Economic Society of Australia, vol. 91(S1), pages 1-24, June.
    9. repec:bla:ecorec:v:91:y:2015:i::p:1-24 is not listed on IDEAS
    10. Firmin Doko Tchatoka & Wenjie Wang, 2020. "Uniform Inference after Pretesting for Exogeneity," School of Economics and Public Policy Working Papers 2020-05, University of Adelaide, School of Economics and Public Policy.
    11. Doko Tchatoka, Firmin & Wang, Wenjie, 2021. "Uniform Inference after Pretesting for Exogeneity with Heteroskedastic Data," MPRA Paper 106408, University Library of Munich, Germany.
    12. Trung V. Vu, 2022. "Does institutional quality foster economic complexity? The fundamental drivers of productive capabilities," Empirical Economics, Springer, vol. 63(3), pages 1571-1604, September.
    13. Martins, Luis F. & Gabriel, Vasco J., 2014. "Linear instrumental variables model averaging estimation," Computational Statistics & Data Analysis, Elsevier, vol. 71(C), pages 709-724.
    14. Sambit Bhattacharyya, 2011. "Growth Miracles and Growth Debacles," Books, Edward Elgar Publishing, number 13609.
    15. Liu, Chu-An & Tao, Jing, 2016. "Model selection and model averaging in nonparametric instrumental variables models," MPRA Paper 69492, University Library of Munich, Germany.
    16. Steven N. Durlauf & Andros Kourtellos & Chih Ming Tan, 2012. "Is God in the details? A reexamination of the role of religion in economic growth," Journal of Applied Econometrics, John Wiley & Sons, Ltd., vol. 27(7), pages 1059-1075, November.
    17. Bhattacharyya, Sambit, 2009. "Institutions, diseases, and economic progress: a unified framework," Journal of Institutional Economics, Cambridge University Press, vol. 5(1), pages 65-87, April.
    18. Stephen Knowles & P. Dorian Owen, 2010. "Which Institutions are Good for Your Health? The Deep Determinants of Comparative Cross-country Health Status," Journal of Development Studies, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 46(4), pages 701-723.
    19. Bodea, Cristina & Elbadawi, Ibrahim A., 2008. "Political violence and economic growth," Policy Research Working Paper Series 4692, The World Bank.
    20. P. Dorian Owen, 2017. "Evaluating Ingenious Instruments for Fundamental Determinants of Long-Run Economic Growth and Development," Econometrics, MDPI, vol. 5(3), pages 1-33, September.
    21. Prosper Donovon & Alastair R. Hall, 2015. "GMM and Indirect Inference: An appraisal of their connections and new results on their properties under second order identification," Economics Discussion Paper Series 1505, Economics, The University of Manchester.

    More about this item

    Keywords

    Moment selection; GMM estimation; Model averaging; Focused Information Criterion; Post-selection estimators;
    All these keywords.

    JEL classification:

    • C21 - Mathematical and Quantitative Methods - - Single Equation Models; Single Variables - - - Cross-Sectional Models; Spatial Models; Treatment Effect Models
    • C26 - Mathematical and Quantitative Methods - - Single Equation Models; Single Variables - - - Instrumental Variables (IV) Estimation
    • C52 - Mathematical and Quantitative Methods - - Econometric Modeling - - - Model Evaluation, Validation, and Selection

    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:pen:papers:14-045. 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: Administrator (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://edirc.repec.org/data/deupaus.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.