Bootstrap-Based Improvements for Inference with Clustered Errors / A. Colin Cameron, Jonah B. Gelbach, Douglas L. Miller.

Format:

Book

Author/Creator:

Cameron, A. Colin.

Contributor:

National Bureau of Economic Research.

Gelbach, Jonah B.

Miller, Douglas L.

Series:

Technical Working Paper Series (National Bureau of Economic Research) no. t0344.

NBER technical working paper series no. t0344

Language:

English

Physical Description:

1 online resource: illustrations (black and white);

Place of Publication:

Cambridge, Mass. National Bureau of Economic Research 2007.

Summary:

Researchers have increasingly realized the need to account for within-group dependence in estimating standard errors of regression parameter estimates. The usual solution is to calculate cluster-robust standard errors that permit heteroskedasticity and within-cluster error correlation, but presume that the number of clusters is large. Standard asymptotic tests can over-reject, however, with few (5-30) clusters. We investigate inference using cluster bootstrap-t procedures that provide asymptotic refinement. These procedures are evaluated using Monte Carlos, including the example of Bertrand, Duflo and Mullainathan (2004). Rejection rates of ten percent using standard methods can be reduced to the nominal size of five percent using our methods.

Notes:

Print version record

September 2007.