Re: st: FW: appropriateness of cluster option with xtreg, re

[Federico Belotti <f.belotti@gmail.com>]

Dear Eva,

in my opinion the answer is: you should.

The fact that you are including in your model unit-specific intercepts (which are assumed to be "mean independent" from the exogenous explanatory variables in the case of -xtreg, re-) does not rule out the possibility that regression residuals exhibit heteroskedasticity and/or serial correlation, that is their variance is not constant between panel units and/or is correlated over time. These issues lead to inconsistent covariance matrix estimates and, therefore, to faulty statistical inference. The option -cluster(panelvar)- allows to avoid this risk.

You should take a look at 

Moulton, Brent R., 1986. "Random group effects and the precision of regression estimates," Journal of Econometrics, Elsevier, vol. 32(3), pages 385-397, August.

http://www.stata.com/meeting/13uk/nichols_crse.pdf

Hope this help.
Federico


On Oct 13, 2013, at 8:07 PM, Eva Wölbert wrote:

> Dear statalist,
> 
>  I would like to know whether I can / should specify cluster(panelvar) when
>  using xtreg, re. 
> 
> This seems to account for the panel structure of the data "twice". Moreover, I am confused because
>  some of my standard errors are going down with the cluster option. 
> 
>  Thanks in advance
> 
>  Eva 		 	   		  
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-- 
Federico Belotti, PhD
Research Fellow
Centre for Economics and International Studies
University of Rome Tor Vergata
tel/fax: +39 06 7259 5627
e-mail: federico.belotti@uniroma2.it
web: http://www.econometrics.it


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