TY  - JOUR
AU  - Almeida,Heitor
AU  - Campello,Murillo
AU  - Galvao,Antonio F.,Jr.
TI  - Measurement Errors in Investment Equations
JF  - National Bureau of Economic Research Working Paper Series
VL  - No. 15951
PY  - 2010
Y2  - April 2010
UR  - http://www.nber.org/papers/w15951
L1  - http://www.nber.org/papers/w15951.pdf
N1  - Author contact info:
Heitor Almeida
University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign
515 East Gregory Drive, 4037 BIF
Champaign, IL, 61820
Tel: 217/333-2704
E-Mail: halmeida@illinois.edu

Murillo Campello
Johnson Graduate School of Management
Cornell University
114 East Avenue
369 Sage Hall
Ithaca, NY 148531-6201
Tel: 607-255-1282
E-Mail: campello@cornell.edu

Antonio Galvao
Department of Economics PO Box 413
Bolton Hall, Room 868
Milwaukee , WI 53201
E-Mail: agalvao@uwm.edu
AB  - We use Monte Carlo simulations and real data to assess the performance of alternative methods that deal with measurement error in investment equations. Our experiments show that individual-fixed effects, error heteroscedasticity, and data skewness severely affect the performance and reliability of methods found in the literature. In particular, estimators that use higher-order moments are shown to return biased coefficients for (both) mismeasured and perfectly-measured regressors. These estimators are also very inefficient. Instrumental variables-type estimators are more robust and efficient, although they require fairly restrictive assumptions. We estimate empirical investment models using alternative methods. Real-world investment data contain firm-fixed effects and heteroscedasticity, causing high-order moments estimators to deliver coefficients that are unstable across different specifications and not economically meaningful. Instrumental variables methods yield estimates that are robust and seem to conform to theoretical priors. Our analysis provides guidance for dealing with the problem of measurement error under circumstances empirical researchers are likely to find in practice.
ER  -