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Autori principali: Cavaliere, Giuseppe, Fanelli, Luca, Georgiev, Iliyan
Natura: Preprint
Pubblicazione: 2025
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Accesso online:https://arxiv.org/abs/2509.01351
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author Cavaliere, Giuseppe
Fanelli, Luca
Georgiev, Iliyan
author_facet Cavaliere, Giuseppe
Fanelli, Luca
Georgiev, Iliyan
contents Violation of the assumptions underlying classical (Gaussian) limit theory often yields unreliable statistical inference. This paper shows that the bootstrap can detect such violations by delivering simple and powerful diagnostic tests that (a) induce no pre-testing bias, (b) use the same critical values across applications, and (c) are consistent against deviations from asymptotic normality. The tests compare the conditional distribution of a bootstrap statistic with the Gaussian limit implied by valid specification and assess whether the resulting discrepancy is large enough to indicate failure of the asymptotic Gaussian approximation. The method is computationally straightforward and only requires a sample of i.i.d. draws of the bootstrap statistic. We derive sufficient conditions for the randomness in the data to mix with the randomness in the bootstrap repetitions in a way such that (a), (b) and (c) above hold. We demonstrate the practical relevance and broad applicability of bootstrap diagnostics by considering several scenarios where the asymptotic Gaussian approximation may fail, including weak instruments, non-stationarity, parameters on the boundary of the parameter space, infinite variance data and singular Jacobian in applications of the delta method. An illustration drawn from the empirical macroeconomic literature concludes.
format Preprint
id arxiv_https___arxiv_org_abs_2509_01351
institution arXiv
publishDate 2025
record_format arxiv
spellingShingle Bootstrap Diagnostic Tests
Cavaliere, Giuseppe
Fanelli, Luca
Georgiev, Iliyan
Econometrics
Statistics Theory
Violation of the assumptions underlying classical (Gaussian) limit theory often yields unreliable statistical inference. This paper shows that the bootstrap can detect such violations by delivering simple and powerful diagnostic tests that (a) induce no pre-testing bias, (b) use the same critical values across applications, and (c) are consistent against deviations from asymptotic normality. The tests compare the conditional distribution of a bootstrap statistic with the Gaussian limit implied by valid specification and assess whether the resulting discrepancy is large enough to indicate failure of the asymptotic Gaussian approximation. The method is computationally straightforward and only requires a sample of i.i.d. draws of the bootstrap statistic. We derive sufficient conditions for the randomness in the data to mix with the randomness in the bootstrap repetitions in a way such that (a), (b) and (c) above hold. We demonstrate the practical relevance and broad applicability of bootstrap diagnostics by considering several scenarios where the asymptotic Gaussian approximation may fail, including weak instruments, non-stationarity, parameters on the boundary of the parameter space, infinite variance data and singular Jacobian in applications of the delta method. An illustration drawn from the empirical macroeconomic literature concludes.
title Bootstrap Diagnostic Tests
topic Econometrics
Statistics Theory
url https://arxiv.org/abs/2509.01351