Robust Estimation and Moment Selection in Dynamic Fixed-Effects Panel Data Models

Abstract

This paper extends an existing outlier-robust estimator of linear dynamic panel data models with fixed effects, which is based on the median ratio of two consecutive pairs of first-differenced data. To improve its precision and robust properties, a general procedure based on many pairwise differences and their ratios is designed. The proposed two-step GMM estimator based on the corresponding moment equations relies on an innovative weighting scheme reflecting both the variance and bias of those moment equations, where the bias is assumed to stem from data contamination. To estimate the bias, the influence function is derived and evaluated. The asymptotic distribution as well as robust properties of the estimator are characterized; the latter are obtained both under contamination by independent additive outliers and the patches of additive outliers. The proposed estimator is additionally compared with existing methods by means of Monte Carlo simulations.

Keywords: dynamic panel data, fixed effects, generalized method of moments, influence

JEL Classification: C13, C23