Robust Structural Estimation under Misspecified Latent-State Dynamics

Ertian Chen

Papers from arXiv.org

Abstract: Estimation and counterfactual analysis in dynamic structural models rely on assumptions about the dynamic process of latent variables, which may be misspecified. We propose a framework to quantify the sensitivity of scalar parameters of interest (e.g., welfare, elasticity) to such assumptions. We derive bounds on the scalar parameter by perturbing a reference dynamic process, while imposing a stationarity condition for time-homogeneous models or a Markovian condition for time-inhomogeneous models. The bounds are the solutions to optimization problems, for which we derive a computationally tractable dual formulation. We establish consistency, convergence rate, and asymptotic distribution for the estimator of the bounds. We demonstrate the approach with two applications: an infinite-horizon dynamic demand model for new cars in the United Kingdom, Germany, and France, and a finite-horizon dynamic labor supply model for taxi drivers in New York City. In the car application, perturbed price elasticities deviate by at most 15.24% from the reference elasticities, while perturbed estimates of consumer surplus from an additional $3,000 electric vehicle subsidy vary by up to 102.75%. In the labor supply application, the perturbed Frisch labor supply elasticity deviates by at most 76.83% for weekday drivers and 42.84% for weekend drivers.

Date: 2025-10, Revised 2025-11
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-ecm and nep-tre
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations:

Downloads: (external link)
http://arxiv.org/pdf/2510.22347 Latest version (application/pdf)

Related works:
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: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:arx:papers:2510.22347

Access Statistics for this paper

More papers in Papers from arXiv.org
Bibliographic data for series maintained by arXiv administrators ().