Series: Working Papers. 1322.
Author: Rodolfo G. Campos and Iliana Reggio.
Published in: Economics Letters, volume 122, issue 2, pp. 197-202
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Abstract
We study how estimators used to impute consumption in survey data are inconsistent due to measurement error in consumption. Previous research suggests instrumenting consumption to overcome this problem. We show that, if additional regressors are present, then instrumenting consumption may still produce inconsistent estimators due to the likely correlation between additional regressors and measurement error. On the other hand, low correlations between additional regressors and instruments may reduce bias due to measurement error. We apply our findings by revisiting recent research that imputes consumption data from the CEX to the PSID.