Timothy B. Armstrong, Patrick Kline, Liyang Sun
arXiv 23 May 2023 · Econometrics · 4 citations (OpenAlex)
arXiv:2305.14265 · PDF · DOI · OpenAlex · Extracted main text
Empirical research typically involves a robustness-efficiency tradeoff. A researcher seeking to estimate a scalar parameter can invoke strong assumptions to motivate a restricted estimator that is precise but may be heavily biased, or they can relax some of these assumptions to motivate a more robust, but variable, unrestricted estimator. When a bound on the bias of the restricted estimator is available, it is optimal to shrink the unrestricted estimator towards the restricted estimator. For settings where a bound on the bias of the restricted estimator is unknown, we propose adaptive estimators that minimize the percentage increase in worst case risk relative to an oracle that knows the bound. We show that adaptive estimators solve a weighted convex minimax problem and provide lookup tables facilitating their rapid computation. Revisiting some well known empirical studies where questions of model specification arise, we examine the advantages of adapting to -- rather than testing for -- misspecification.
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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.
| Reference | Intensity | Mentions | Sections | Main text | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Gentzkow, M., J. M. Shapiro, and M. Sinkinson (2011, December) (2011) The Effect of Newspaper Entry and Exit on Electoral Politics | 1.000 | 6 | 3 | 100% |
| 2 | Bickel, P. J. (1984, September) (1984) Parametric Robustness: Small Biases can be Worthwhile | 1.000 | 5 | 4 | 100% |
| 3 | de Chaisemartin, C. and X. D'Haultfuille (2020b, September) (2020) Two-Way Fixed Effects Estimators with Heterogeneous Treatment Effects | 1.000 | 5 | 3 | 100% |
| 4 | Angrist, J. D. and A. B. Krueger (1991) Does Compulsory School Attendance Affect Schooling and Earnings? | 0.874 | 5 | 2 | 100% |
| 5 | de Chaisemartin, C. and X. D'Haultfuille (2020a, June) (2020) Empirical MSE Minimization to Estimate a Scalar Parameter | 0.737 | 3 | 2 | 100% |
| 6 | Armstrong, T. B., P. Kline, and L. Sun (2023) Adapting to misspecification self | 0.644 | 2 | 2 | 100% |
| 7 | Tibshirani, R (1996) Regression shrinkage and selection via the lasso | 0.644 | 2 | 2 | 100% |
| 8 | Tsybakov, A. B. (1998, December) (1998) Pointwise and sup-norm sharp adaptive estimation of functions on the Sobolev classes | 0.644 | 2 | 2 | 100% |
| 9 | Bickel, P. J (1983) Minimax estimation of the mean of a normal distribution subject to doing well at a point | 0.511 | 4 | 2 | 25% |
| 10 | LaLonde, R. J (1986) Evaluating the econometric evaluations of training programs with experimental data | 0.511 | 4 | 2 | 25% |
Showing the top 10 of 29 scored citations.