Instrumental variables - stage OLS (2SLS)

4 important questions on Instrumental variables - stage OLS (2SLS)

What is 2-stage least squares? And what are the stages?

2SLS is another useful way to view the IV estimator.
  1. The first stage is to regress x on the instrument Z to obtain fitted values of x.
  2. Then regress y on the fitted values of x. The estimated coefficient will then be identical as the IV estimator.

What does the MLR6 assumption mean for the estimate parameter?

The population error u ~ N(0,o2) independently from the explanatory variables x=(x1,x2, ..,xk)
Under assumptions MLR1-MLR6, conditional on the independent variables, the Bj also have a joint normal distribution.

What happens if we estimate 2 or more instruments separately?

If we have two or more instruments and estimated the coefficient separately, we could get different estimates. Possible reasons:
  • Sampling variation
  • One or more instruments are invalid
  • The observations affected by each instrument have a different response to x.
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What is structural form, reduced form, first stage and second stage?

  1. The structural form is our causal model of interests
  2. The reduced form is a regression of y on instruments
  3. The first stage is a regression of x on the instruments
  4. The second stage is the regression stage with the fitted values of x from the first stage.

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