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Bias Reduction in Instrumental Variable Estimation through First-Stage Shrinkage

Jann Spiess

arXiv 21 Aug 2017 · Mathematics — Statistics Theory · 1 citations (OpenAlex)

arXiv:1708.06443 · PDF · DOI · OpenAlex · Extracted main text

Abstract

The two-stage least-squares (2SLS) estimator is known to be biased when its first-stage fit is poor. I show that better first-stage prediction can alleviate this bias. In a two-stage linear regression model with Normal noise, I consider shrinkage in the estimation of the first-stage instrumental variable coefficients. For at least four instrumental variables and a single endogenous regressor, I establish that the standard 2SLS estimator is dominated with respect to bias. The dominating IV estimator applies James-Stein type shrinkage in a first-stage high-dimensional Normal-means problem followed by a control-function approach in the second stage. It preserves invariances of the structural instrumental variable equations.

Citation extraction

7
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Most heavily cited references

The works this paper leans on most, across its whole bibliography — not restricted to papers in our corpus. Ranked by composite intensity, which combines how often a work is mentioned, how many sections mention it, and how much of that falls in the main text rather than the appendix.

ReferenceIntensityMentionsSectionsMain text
1Chamberlain, G (2007) Decision Theory Applied to an Instrumental Variables Model0.84333100%
2James, W. and Stein, C (1961) Estimation with quadratic loss0.81142100%
3Stein, C. M (1981) Estimation of the Mean of a Multivariate Normal Distribution0.51121100%
4Spiess, J (2017) Unbiased Shrinkage Estimation self0.40511100%
5Piegorsch, W. W. and Casella, G (1985) The existence of the first negative moment0.40511100%
6Hansen, B. E (2017) Stein-like 2SLS estimator0.40511100%
7Moser, S. M (2008) Expectations of a noncentral chi-square distribution with application to IID MIMO Gaussian fading0.40511100%

Showing the top 7 of 7 scored citations.

Cited by, within the corpus

arXiv econ.EM papers that cite this one, ranked by how heavily they lean on it.

Citing paperIntensityMentionsSections
1Unbiased Shrinkage Estimation0.40511
2Revisiting the Many Instruments Problem using Random Matrix Theory0.40511