IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/eee/econom/v160y2011i2p289-299.html

The Hausman test and weak instruments

Author

Listed:
  • Hahn, Jinyong
  • Ham, John C.
  • Moon, Hyungsik Roger

Abstract

We consider the following problem. There is a structural equation of interest that contains an explanatory variable that theory predicts is endogenous. There are one or more instrumental variables that credibly are exogenous with regard to this structural equation, but which have limited explanatory power for the endogenous variable. Further, there is one or more potentially 'strong' instruments, which has much more explanatory power but which may not be exogenous. Hausman (1978) provided a test for the exogeneity of the second instrument when none of the instruments are weak. Here, we focus on how the standard Hausman test does in the presence of weak instruments using the Staiger-Stock asymptotics. It is natural to conjecture that the standard version of the Hausman test would be invalid in the weak instrument case, which we confirm. However, we provide a version of the Hausman test that is valid even in the presence of weak IV and illustrate how to implement the test in the presence of heteroskedasticity. We show that the situation we analyze occurs in several important economic examples. Our Monte Carlo experiments show that our procedure works relatively well in finite samples. We should note that our test is not consistent, although we believe that it is impossible to construct a consistent test with weak instruments.

Suggested Citation

  • Hahn, Jinyong & Ham, John C. & Moon, Hyungsik Roger, 2011. "The Hausman test and weak instruments," Journal of Econometrics, Elsevier, vol. 160(2), pages 289-299, February.
    • Handle: RePEc:eee:econom:v:160:y:2011:i:2:p:289-299
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0304-4076(10)00189-2
    Download Restriction: Full text for ScienceDirect subscribers only
    ---><---

    As the access to this document is restricted, you may want to

    for a different version of it.

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Willis, Robert J & Rosen, Sherwin, 1979. "Education and Self-Selection," Journal of Political Economy, University of Chicago Press, vol. 87(5), pages 7-36, October.
    2. Strauss, John & Thomas, Duncan, 1995. "Human resources: Empirical modeling of household and family decisions," Handbook of Development Economics, in: Hollis Chenery & T.N. Srinivasan (ed.), Handbook of Development Economics, edition 1, volume 3, chapter 34, pages 1883-2023, Elsevier.
    3. Jerry Hausman, 2015. "Specification tests in econometrics," Applied Econometrics, Russian Presidential Academy of National Economy and Public Administration (RANEPA), vol. 38(2), pages 112-134.
    4. Marcelo J. Moreira, 2003. "A Conditional Likelihood Ratio Test for Structural Models," Econometrica, Econometric Society, vol. 71(4), pages 1027-1048, July.
    5. Bekker, Paul A, 1994. "Alternative Approximations to the Distributions of Instrumental Variable Estimators," Econometrica, Econometric Society, vol. 62(3), pages 657-681, May.
    6. Altonji, Joseph G, 1986. "Intertemporal Substitution in Labor Supply: Evidence from Micro Data," Journal of Political Economy, University of Chicago Press, vol. 94(3), pages 176-215, June.
    7. Jinyong Hahn & Jerry Hausman, 2002. "A New Specification Test for the Validity of Instrumental Variables," Econometrica, Econometric Society, vol. 70(1), pages 163-189, January.
    8. Donald W. K. Andrews & Marcelo J. Moreira & James H. Stock, 2006. "Optimal Two-Sided Invariant Similar Tests for Instrumental Variables Regression," Econometrica, Econometric Society, vol. 74(3), pages 715-752, May.
    9. Frank Kleibergen, 2002. "Pivotal Statistics for Testing Structural Parameters in Instrumental Variables Regression," Econometrica, Econometric Society, vol. 70(5), pages 1781-1803, September.
    10. Donald, Stephen G & Newey, Whitney K, 2001. "Choosing the Number of Instruments," Econometrica, Econometric Society, vol. 69(5), pages 1161-1191, September.
    11. D. W. K. Andrews, 2003. "End-of-Sample Instability Tests," Econometrica, Econometric Society, vol. 71(6), pages 1661-1694, November.
    12. John C. Ham & Kevin T. Reilly, 2002. "Testing Intertemporal Substitution, Implicit Contracts, and Hours Restriction Models of the Labor Market Using Micro Data," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 92(4), pages 905-927, September.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Most related items

    These are the items that most often cite the same works as this one and are cited by the same works as this one.
    1. Bekker, Paul A. & Lawford, Steve, 2008. "Symmetry-based inference in an instrumental variable setting," Journal of Econometrics, Elsevier, vol. 142(1), pages 28-49, January.
    2. Hansen, Christian & Hausman, Jerry & Newey, Whitney, 2008. "Estimation With Many Instrumental Variables," Journal of Business & Economic Statistics, American Statistical Association, vol. 26, pages 398-422.
    3. Wang, Wenjie & Doko Tchatoka, Firmin, 2018. "On Bootstrap inconsistency and Bonferroni-based size-correction for the subset Anderson–Rubin test under conditional homoskedasticity," Journal of Econometrics, Elsevier, vol. 207(1), pages 188-211.
    4. Guo, Zijian & Kang, Hyunseung & Cai, T. Tony & Small, Dylan S., 2018. "Testing endogeneity with high dimensional covariates," Journal of Econometrics, Elsevier, vol. 207(1), pages 175-187.
    5. Matsushita, Yukitoshi & Otsu, Taisuke, 2024. "A jackknife Lagrange multiplier test with many weak instruments," LSE Research Online Documents on Economics 116392, London School of Economics and Political Science, LSE Library.
    6. Guilhem Bascle, 2008. "Controlling for endogeneity with instrumental variables in strategic management research," Post-Print hal-00576795, HAL.
    7. Doko Tchatoka, Firmin Sabro & Dufour, Jean-Marie, 2008. "Instrument endogeneity and identification-robust tests: some analytical results," MPRA Paper 29613, University Library of Munich, Germany.
    8. Anna Mikusheva, 2013. "Survey on statistical inferences in weakly-identified instrumental variable models," Applied Econometrics, Russian Presidential Academy of National Economy and Public Administration (RANEPA), vol. 29(1), pages 117-131.
    9. Norman R. Swanson & John C. Chao, 2004. "Estimation and Testing Using Jackknife IV in Heteroskedastic Regressions with Many Weak Instruments," Econometric Society 2004 Far Eastern Meetings 668, Econometric Society.
    10. Joel L. Horowitz, 2018. "Non-Asymptotic Inference in Instrumental Variables Estimation," Papers 1809.03600, arXiv.org.
    11. Horowitz, Joel L., 2021. "Bounding the difference between true and nominal rejection probabilities in tests of hypotheses about instrumental variables models," Journal of Econometrics, Elsevier, vol. 222(2), pages 1057-1082.
    12. Manu Navjeevan, 2023. "An Identification and Dimensionality Robust Test for Instrumental Variables Models," Papers 2311.14892, arXiv.org, revised Dec 2024.
    13. Joel L. Horowitz, 2017. "Non-asymptotic inference in instrumental variables estimation," CeMMAP working papers CWP46/17, Centre for Microdata Methods and Practice, Institute for Fiscal Studies.
    14. Johannes W. Ligtenberg, 2023. "Inference in clustered IV models with many and weak instruments," Papers 2306.08559, arXiv.org, revised Oct 2025.
    15. Carlos Velasco & Xuexin Wang, 2021. "Instrumental variable estimation via a continuum of instruments with an application to estimating the elasticity of intertemporal substitution in consumption," Working Papers 2024-09-06, Wang Yanan Institute for Studies in Economics (WISE), Xiamen University.
    16. Imbens, Guido W., 2014. "Instrumental Variables: An Econometrician's Perspective," IZA Discussion Papers 8048, IZA Network @ LISER.
    17. James L. Powell, 2017. "Identification and Asymptotic Approximations: Three Examples of Progress in Econometric Theory," Journal of Economic Perspectives, American Economic Association, vol. 31(2), pages 107-124, Spring.
    18. Russell Davidson & Victoria Zinde-Walsh, 2017. "Advances in specification testing," Canadian Journal of Economics, Canadian Economics Association, vol. 50(5), pages 1595-1631, December.
    19. A. Belloni & D. Chen & V. Chernozhukov & C. Hansen, 2012. "Sparse Models and Methods for Optimal Instruments With an Application to Eminent Domain," Econometrica, Econometric Society, vol. 80(6), pages 2369-2429, November.
    20. Doko Tchatoka, Firmin, 2011. "Testing for partial exogeneity with weak identification," MPRA Paper 39504, University Library of Munich, Germany, revised Mar 2012.

    More about this item

    Keywords

    ;

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:eee:econom:v:160:y:2011:i:2:p:289-299. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    If CitEc recognized a bibliographic reference but did not link an item in RePEc to it, you can help with this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Catherine Liu (email available below). General contact details of provider: http://www.elsevier.com/locate/jeconom .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.