IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/p/hal/wpaper/hal-05624839.html

Accurate Estimation of Small Effects: Illustration Through Air Pollution and Health

Author

Listed:
  • Vincent Bagilet

    (ENS de Lyon - École normale supérieure de Lyon - Université de Lyon)

Abstract

This paper identifies design parameters that can lead to inaccurate estimates of small effects. Low statistical power not only makes such effects difficult to detect but resulting significant estimates necessarily exaggerate true effect sizes on average. Through the literature on short-term health effects of air pollution, I explore this issue and its policy implications. Exaggeration can be substantial and power low even with large sample sizes. Real-data simulations highlight key additional drivers: the number of exogenous shocks, instrument strength, and outcome count. I propose a workflow to evaluate and mitigate exaggeration risk in non-experimental studies.

Suggested Citation

  • Vincent Bagilet, 2026. "Accurate Estimation of Small Effects: Illustration Through Air Pollution and Health," Working Papers hal-05624839, HAL.
    • Handle: RePEc:hal:wpaper:hal-05624839
    Note: View the original document on HAL open archive server: https://hal.science/hal-05624839v1
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: https://hal.science/hal-05624839v1/document
    Download Restriction: no
    ---><---

    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:hal:wpaper:hal-05624839. 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.

    We have no bibliographic references for this item. You can help adding them by using 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: CCSD (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://hal.archives-ouvertes.fr/ .

    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.