Bootstrap Inference in a Linear Equation Estimated by Instrumental Variables

We study several tests for the coefficient of the single right-hand-side endogenous vari- able in a linear equation estimated by instrumental variables. We show that writing all the test statistics—Student’s t, Anderson-Rubin, the LM statistic of Kleibergen and Moreira (K), and likelihood ratio (LR)—as functions of six random quantities leads to a number of interesting results about the properties of the tests under weak- instrument asymptotics. We then propose several new procedures for bootstrapping the three non-exact test statistics and also a new conditional bootstrap version of the LR test. These use more efficient estimates of the parameters of the reduced-form equation than existing procedures. When the best of these new procedures is used, both the K and conditional bootstrap LR tests have excellent performance under the null. However, power considerations suggest that the latter is probably the method of choice.