Spurious Instrumental Variables

Abstract

Spurious regression phenomenon has been recognized for a wide range of Data Generating Processes: driftless unit roots, unit roots with drift, long memory, trend and broken-trend stationarity, etc. The usual framework is Ordinary Least Squares. We show that the spurious phenomenon also occurs in Instrumental Variables estimation when using non-stationary variables, whether the non-stationarity component is stochastic or deterministic. Finite sample evidence supports the asymptotic results.IV Estimator, Spurious Regression, Broken-Trend stationarity, Unit Root