Heterogeneous Treatment Effects with Mismeasured Endogenous Treatment

This paper studies the identifying power of an instrumental variable in the nonparametric heterogeneous treatment effect framework when a binary treatment is mismeasured and endogenous. Using a binary instrumental variable, I characterize the sharp identified set for the local average treatment effect under the exclusion restriction of an instrument and the deterministic monotonicity of the true treatment in the instrument. Even allowing for general measurement error (e.g., the measurement error is endogenous), it is still possible to obtain finite bounds on the local average treatment effect. Notably, the Wald estimand is an upper bound on the local average treatment effect, but it is not the sharp bound in general. I also provide a confidence interval for the local average treatment effect with uniformly asymptotically valid size control. Furthermore, I demonstrate that the identification strategy of this paper offers a new use of repeated measurements for tightening the identified set

Identification and Inference of Network Formation Games with Misclassified Links

This paper considers a network formation model when links are potentially measured with error. We focus on a game-theoretical model of strategic network formation with incomplete information, in which the linking decisions depend on agents' exogenous attributes and endogenous network characteristics. In the presence of link misclassification, we derive moment conditions that characterize the identified set for the preference parameters associated with homophily and network externalities. Based on the moment equality conditions, we provide an inference method that is asymptotically valid when a single network of many agents is observed. Finally, we apply our proposed method to study trust networks in rural villages in southern India

Finite Sample Inference for the Maximum Score Estimand

We provide a finite sample inference method for the structural parameters of a semiparametric binary response model under a conditional median restriction originally studied by Manski (1975, 1985). Our inference method is valid for any sample size and irrespective of whether the structural parameters are point identified or partially identified, for example due to the lack of a continuously distributed covariate with large support. Our inference approach exploits distributional properties of observable outcomes conditional on the observed sequence of exogenous variables. Moment inequalities conditional on this size n sequence of exogenous covariates are constructed, and the test statistic is a monotone function of violations of sample moment inequalities. The critical value used for inference is provided by the appropriate quantile of a known function of n independent Rademacher random variables. We investigate power properties of the underlying test and provide simulation studies to support the theoretical findings

Inference in Dynamic Discrete Choice Problems under Local Misspecification

Single-agent dynamic discrete choice models are typically estimated using heavily parametrized econometric frameworks, making them susceptible to model misspecification. This paper investigates how misspecification affects the results of inference in these models. Specifically, we consider a local misspecification framework in which specification errors are assumed to vanish at an arbitrary and unknown rate with the sample size. Relative to global misspecification, the local misspecification analysis has two important advantages. First, it yields tractable and general results. Second, it allows us to focus on parameters with structural interpretation, instead of "pseudo-true" parameters. We consider a general class of two-step estimators based on the K-stage sequential policy function iteration algorithm, where K denotes the number of iterations employed in the estimation. This class includes Hotz and Miller (1993)'s conditional choice probability estimator, Aguirregabiria and Mira (2002)'s pseudo-likelihood estimator, and Pesendorfer and Schmidt-Dengler (2008)'s asymptotic least squares estimator. We show that local misspecification can affect the asymptotic distribution and even the rate of convergence of these estimators. In principle, one might expect that the effect of the local misspecification could change with the number of iterations K. One of our main findings is that this is not the case, i.e., the effect of local misspecification is invariant to K. In practice, this means that researchers cannot eliminate or even alleviate problems of model misspecification by changing K

Faster estimation of dynamic discrete choice models using index sufficiency

Many estimators of dynamic discrete choice models with permanent unobserved heterogeneity have desirable statistical properties but may be computationally intensive. In this paper we propose a method to quicken estimation for a broad class of dynamic discrete choice problems by exploiting index sufficiency. Index sufficiency implies a set of equality constraints which restrict the structural parameter of interest to belong in a subspace of the parameter space. We propose an estimator that uses the equality constraints, and show it is asymptotically equivalent to the unconstrained, computationally heavy estimator. Since the computational gains of our proposed estimator are due to the restriction of the parameter space to the subspace satisfying the equality constraints, we provide a series of results on the dimension of this subspace. Finally, we demonstrate the advantages of our approach by estimating a dynamic model of the U.K. fast food market

Unconditional quantile regression with high-dimensional data

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