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On the construction of confidence intervals for ratios of expectations

Alexis Derumigny, Lucas Girard, Yannick Guyonvarch

arXiv 10 Apr 2019 · Mathematics — Statistics Theory

arXiv:1904.07111 · PDF · DOI · OpenAlex · Extracted main text

Abstract

In econometrics, many parameters of interest can be written as ratios of expectations. The main approach to construct confidence intervals for such parameters is the delta method. However, this asymptotic procedure yields intervals that may not be relevant for small sample sizes or, more generally, in a sequence-of-model framework that allows the expectation in the denominator to decrease to $0$ with the sample size. In this setting, we prove a generalization of the delta method for ratios of expectations and the consistency of the nonparametric percentile bootstrap. We also investigate finite-sample inference and show a partial impossibility result: nonasymptotic uniform confidence intervals can be built for ratios of expectations but not at every level. Based on this, we propose an easy-to-compute index to appraise the reliability of the intervals based on the delta method. Simulations and an application illustrate our results and the practical usefulness of our rule of thumb.

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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
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7T. W. Anderson and H. Rubin (1949) Estimation of the parameters of a single equation in a complete system of stochastic equations0.40511100%
8I. Andrews, J. Stock, and L. Sun (2019) Weak instruments in IV regression: Theory and practice0.40511100%
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Showing the top 10 of 13 scored citations.