On the Failure of the Bootstrap for Matching Estimators
2008; Wiley; Volume: 76; Issue: 6 Linguagem: Inglês
10.3982/ecta6474
ISSN1468-0262
AutoresAlberto Abadie, Guido W. Imbens,
Tópico(s)Economic Policies and Impacts
ResumoEconometricaVolume 76, Issue 6 p. 1537-1557 On the Failure of the Bootstrap for Matching Estimators Alberto Abadie, Alberto Abadie John F. Kennedy School of Government, Harvard University, 79 John F. Kennedy Street, Cambridge, MA 02138, U.S.A. and NBER; [email protected], http://www.ksg.harvard.edu/fs/aabadie/Search for more papers by this authorGuido W. Imbens, Guido W. Imbens Dept. of Economics, Harvard University, M-24 Litauer Center, 1805 Cambridge Street, Cambridge, MA 02138, U.S.A. and NBER; [email protected], http://www.economics.harvard.edu/faculty/imbens/imbens.html We are grateful for comments by Peter Bickel, Stéphane Bonhomme, Joel Horowitz, Francis Kramarz, Whitney Newey, seminar participants at Princeton, CEMFI, CREST, and Harvard/MIT, and two anonymous reviewers. Financial support for this research was generously provided through NSF Grants SES-0350645 (Abadie), SES-0136789, and SES-0452590 (Imbens).Search for more papers by this author Alberto Abadie, Alberto Abadie John F. Kennedy School of Government, Harvard University, 79 John F. Kennedy Street, Cambridge, MA 02138, U.S.A. and NBER; [email protected], http://www.ksg.harvard.edu/fs/aabadie/Search for more papers by this authorGuido W. Imbens, Guido W. Imbens Dept. of Economics, Harvard University, M-24 Litauer Center, 1805 Cambridge Street, Cambridge, MA 02138, U.S.A. and NBER; [email protected], http://www.economics.harvard.edu/faculty/imbens/imbens.html We are grateful for comments by Peter Bickel, Stéphane Bonhomme, Joel Horowitz, Francis Kramarz, Whitney Newey, seminar participants at Princeton, CEMFI, CREST, and Harvard/MIT, and two anonymous reviewers. Financial support for this research was generously provided through NSF Grants SES-0350645 (Abadie), SES-0136789, and SES-0452590 (Imbens).Search for more papers by this author First published: 24 November 2008 https://doi.org/10.3982/ECTA6474Citations: 426 AboutPDF ToolsRequest permissionExport citationAdd to favoritesTrack citation ShareShare Give accessShare full text accessShare full-text accessPlease review our Terms and Conditions of Use and check box below to share full-text version of article.I have read and accept the Wiley Online Library Terms and Conditions of UseShareable LinkUse the link below to share a full-text version of this article with your friends and colleagues. Learn more.Copy URL Abstract Matching estimators are widely used in empirical economics for the evaluation of programs or treatments. Researchers using matching methods often apply the bootstrap to calculate the standard errors. However, no formal justification has been provided for the use of the bootstrap in this setting. In this article, we show that the standard bootstrap is, in general, not valid for matching estimators, even in the simple case with a single continuous covariate where the estimator is root-N consistent and asymptotically normally distributed with zero asymptotic bias. Valid inferential methods in this setting are the analytic asymptotic variance estimator of Abadie and Imbens (2006a) as well as certain modifications of the standard bootstrap, like the subsampling methods in Politis and Romano (1994). References Abadie, A., and G. Imbens (2006a): “Large Sample Properties of Matching Estimators for Average Treatment Effects,” Econometrica, 74, 235– 267. Abadie, A., and G. Imbens (2006b): “ On the Failure of the Bootstrap for Matching Estimators,” Working Paper, available at http://www.ksg.harvard.edu/fs/aabadie. Abadie, A., and G. 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