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Negative Control Falsification Tests for Instrumental Variable Designs

Oren Danieli, Daniel Nevo, Itai Walk, Bar Weinstein, Dan Zeltzer

arXiv 25 Dec 2023 · Econometrics · publishedAmerican Economic Review (2026) · 5 citations (OpenAlex)

arXiv:2312.15624 · PDF · DOI · OpenAlex · Extracted main text

Abstract

The validity of instrumental variable (IV) designs is typically tested using two types of falsification tests. We characterize these tests as conditional independence tests between negative control variables -- proxies for unobserved variables posing a threat to the identification -- and the IV or the outcome. We describe the conditions that variables must satisfy in order to serve as negative controls. We show that these falsification tests examine not only independence and the exclusion restriction, but also functional form assumptions. Our analysis reveals that conventional applications of these tests may flag problems even in valid IV designs. We offer implementation guidance to address these issues.

Citation extraction

49
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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
1Gregory J. Martin \ Ali Yurukoglu (2017) Bias in cable news: Persuasion and polarization1.00093100%
2David H. Autor, David Dorn \ Gordon H. Hanson (2013) The China syndrome: Local labor market effects of import competition in the United States0.92810380%
3Quamrul Ashraf \ Oded Galor (2013) The 'Out of Africa' hypothesis, human genetic diversity, and comparative economic development0.9209378%
4Nathan Nunn \ Nancy Qian (2014) US food aid and civil conflict0.91321576%
5David J. Deming (2014) Using school choice lotteries to test measures of school effectiveness0.88513469%
6Xu Shi, Wang Miao \ Eric Tchetgen Tchetgen (2020) A selective review of negative control methods in epidemiology0.87452100%
7Joshua D. Angrist \ William N. Evans (1998) Children and their parents' labor supply: Evidence from exogenous variation in family size0.81142100%
8Andrew C. Eggers, Guadalupe Tuñón \ Allan Dafoe (2023) Placebo tests for causal inference0.7373367%
9Alberto Abadie (2003) Semiparametric instrumental variable estimation of treatment response models0.73732100%
10Brian Jacob, Lars Lefgren \ Enrico Moretti (2007) The dynamics of criminal behavior: Evidence from weather shocks0.73732100%

Showing the top 10 of 49 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
1Integrating Diagnostic Checks into Estimation0.40511