Nickell Bias in Panel Local Projection: Financial Crises Are Worse Than You Think

Fuente: arXiv
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Autori principali: Mei, Ziwei, Sheng, Liugang, Shi, Zhentao
Natura: Preprint
Pubblicazione: 2023
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author Mei, Ziwei
Sheng, Liugang
Shi, Zhentao
author_facet Mei, Ziwei
Sheng, Liugang
Shi, Zhentao
contents Panel local projection (LP) with fixed-effects (FE) is widely adopted for evaluating the economic consequences of financial crises across countries. This paper highlights a fundamental methodological issue: the presence of the Nickell bias in the panel FE estimator due to inherent dynamic structures of predictive specifications, even if the regressors have no lagged dependent variables. The Nickell bias invalidates the standard inferential procedure based on the $t$-statistic. We propose a split-panel jackknife (SPJ) estimator as a simple, easy-to-implement, and yet effective solution to eliminate the bias and restore valid statistical inference. We revisit four influential empirical studies on the impact of financial crises, and find that the FE method underestimates the economic losses of financial crises relative to the SPJ estimates. Replication files are available at https://metricshilab.github.io/panel-lp-replication/, with links to R and Stata packages.
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id arxiv_https___arxiv_org_abs_2302_13455
institution arXiv
publishDate 2023
record_format arxiv
spellingShingle Nickell Bias in Panel Local Projection: Financial Crises Are Worse Than You Think
Mei, Ziwei
Sheng, Liugang
Shi, Zhentao
Econometrics
Panel local projection (LP) with fixed-effects (FE) is widely adopted for evaluating the economic consequences of financial crises across countries. This paper highlights a fundamental methodological issue: the presence of the Nickell bias in the panel FE estimator due to inherent dynamic structures of predictive specifications, even if the regressors have no lagged dependent variables. The Nickell bias invalidates the standard inferential procedure based on the $t$-statistic. We propose a split-panel jackknife (SPJ) estimator as a simple, easy-to-implement, and yet effective solution to eliminate the bias and restore valid statistical inference. We revisit four influential empirical studies on the impact of financial crises, and find that the FE method underestimates the economic losses of financial crises relative to the SPJ estimates. Replication files are available at https://metricshilab.github.io/panel-lp-replication/, with links to R and Stata packages.
title Nickell Bias in Panel Local Projection: Financial Crises Are Worse Than You Think
topic Econometrics
url https://arxiv.org/abs/2302.13455