Spotlight on Researcher Decisions – Infrastructure Evaluation, Instrumental Variables, and Specification Screening

Gunther Bensch, Jörg Peters and Colin Vance

VfS Annual Conference 2023 (Regensburg): Growth and the "sociale Frage" from Verein für Socialpolitik / German Economic Association

Abstract: This paper revisits the instrumental variable (IV) approach in Lipscomb et al. (2013, 2021, LMB) to study the impacts of electrification. We first make corrections to the construction of the dataset, including the modelled IV. Revised estimates on main outcomes and mechanisms are statistically insignificant, with substantially lower effect sizes. We second develop a framework that accounts for weak IVs and discourages specification screening. Applying it to LMB, we find that most theoretically justified specifications yield insignificant results. The proposed framework is transferable to other IV applications to reduce potential bias stemming from researcher's or replicator's discretion.

Keywords: replication; instrumental variables; electrification; infrastructure; specification curve analysis; robust inference (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: C52 O13 O18 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2023
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Citations: View citations in EconPapers (2)

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Working Paper: Spotlight on researcher decisions: Infrastructure evaluation, instrumental variables, and specification screening (2023)
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Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:zbw:vfsc23:277703

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