On the Failure of the Bootstrap for Matching Estimators

Alberto Abadie () and Guido W. Imbens

Econometrica, 2008, vol. 76, issue 6, pages 1537-1557

Abstract: Matching estimators are widely used in empirical economics for the evaluation of programs or treatments. Researchers using matching methods often apply the bootstrap to calculate the standard errors. However, no formal justification has been provided for the use of the bootstrap in this setting. In this article, we show that the standard bootstrap is, in general, not valid for matching estimators, even in the simple case with a single continuous covariate where the estimator is root-N consistent and asymptotically normally distributed with zero asymptotic bias. Valid inferential methods in this setting are the analytic asymptotic variance estimator of Abadie and Imbens (2006a) as well as certain modifications of the standard bootstrap, like the subsampling methods in Politis and Romano (1994). Copyright 2008 The Econometric Society.

Date: 2008
View citations in EconPapers

Downloads: (external link)
http://hdl.handle.net/10.3982/ECTA6474 link to full text (text/html)
Access to full text is restricted to subscribers.

Related works:
Working Paper: On the Failure of the Bootstrap for Matching Estimators (2006)
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: http://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:ecm:emetrp:v:76:y:2008:i:6:p:1537-1557

Ordering information: This journal article can be ordered from
http://www.blackwell ... mb.asp?ref=0012-9682

Access Statistics for this article

Econometrica is edited by Stephen Morris

More articles in Econometrica from Econometric Society
Contact information at EDIRC.
Series data maintained by Christopher F. Baum ().