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Valid <i>t</i>-ratio Inference for IV

David S. Lee, Justin McCrary, Marcelo J. Moreira, Jack PorterEconomics计量经济学FT50
American Economic Review2022-09-29Princeton University; Columbia University; Electronic Product Services (Czechia); Escola Brasileira de Economia e FinançasDOI
Citations278

In the single-IV model, researchers commonly rely on t-ratio-based inference, even though the literature has quantified its potentially severe large-sample distortions. Building on Stock and Yogo (2005), we introduce the tF critical value function, leading to a standard error adjustment that is a smooth function of the first-stage F-statistic. For one-quarter of specifications in 61 AER papers, corrected standard errors are at least 49 and 136 percent larger than conventional 2SLS standard errors at the 5 percent and 1 percent significance levels, respectively. tF confidence intervals have shorter expected length than those of Anderson and Rubin (1949), whenever both are bounded. (JEL C13, C26)

InferenceEconometricsStandard errorStatisticConfidence intervalEconomicsBounded functionStatisticsStock (firearms)Standard deviationMathematicsFunction (biology)