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A Modified Randomization Test for the Level of Clustering

Yong Cai

arXiv 3 May 2021 · Econometrics · publishedJournal of Business and Economic Statistics (2023) · 3 citations (OpenAlex)

arXiv:2105.01008 · PDF · DOI · OpenAlex · Extracted main text

Abstract

Suppose a researcher observes individuals within a county within a state. Given concerns about correlation across individuals, it is common to group observations into clusters and conduct inference treating observations across clusters as roughly independent. However, a researcher that has chosen to cluster at the county level may be unsure of their decision, given knowledge that observations are independent across states. This paper proposes a modified randomization test as a robustness check for the chosen level of clustering in a linear regression setting. Existing tests require either the number of states or number of counties to be large. Our method is designed for settings with few states and few counties. While the method is conservative, it has competitive power in settings that may be relevant to empirical work.

Citation extraction

21
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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
1MacKinnon, J. G., M. A. Nielsen, and M. D. Webb (2020) Testing for the Appropriate Level of Clustering in Linear Regression Models1.00083100%
2Ibragimov, R. and U. K. Müller (2016) Inference with Few heterogeneous Clusters1.00073100%
3Gneezy, U., J. A. List, J. A. Livingston, X. Qin, S. Sadoff, and Y. Xu (2019) Measuring Success in Education: The Role of Effort on the Test Itself0.96911591%
4Canay, I. A., J. P. Romano, and A. M. Shaikh (2017) Randomization Tests under an Approximate Symmetry Assumption0.9285480%
5Cameron, A. C., J. B. Gelbach, and D. L. Miller (2008) Bootstrap-Based Improvements for Inference with Clustered Errors0.7373367%
6Angrist, J. D. and J.-S. Pischke (2008) Mostly Harmless Econometrics0.64422100%
7Abadie, A., S. Athey, G. Imbens, and J. Wooldridge (2017) When Should You Adjust Standard Errors for Clustering?0.51121100%
8Bester, C. A., T. G. Conley, and C. B. Hansen (2011) Inference with dependent data using cluster covariance estimators0.40511100%
9Bertrand, M., E. Duflo, and M. Sendhil (2004) How Much Should We Trust Differences-in-Differences Estimates?0.40511100%
10Bell, R. and D. E. McCaffrey (2002) Bias Reduction in Standard Errors for Linear Regression with Multi-Stage Samples0.40511100%

Showing the top 10 of 21 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
1Testing for the appropriate level of clustering in linear regression models1.00063
21 Panel Data with Unknown Clusters0.51121
31 Some Finite Sample Properties of the Sign Test0.40511
4Cluster-Robust Inference: A Guide to Empirical Practice0.40511
5When Can We Trust Cluster-Robust Inference?0.40511