Seminar

Past

How to Weight in Moments Matching: A New Approach and Applications to Earnings Dynamics

Andrew Shephard

  • Date14 October 2025
  • Time 15h30 - 16h50
  • Room Auditorium 4

Abstract

Following the seminal paper by Altonji and Segal (1996), empirical studies have widely embraced equal or diagonal weighting in minimum distance estimation to mitigate the finite-sample bias caused by sampling errors in the weighting matrix. This paper introduces a new weighting scheme that combines cross-fitting and regularized weighting matrix estimation. We also provide a new cross-fitting standard error, applying cross-fitting to estimate the asymptotic variance. In a many-moment asymptotic framework, we demonstrate the effectiveness of cross-fitting in eliminating a first-order asymptotic bias due to weighting matrix sampling errors. Additionally, we demonstrate that some economic models in the earnings dynamics literature meet certain sparsity conditions, ensuring that the proposed regularized weighting matrix behaves similarly to the oracle weighting matrix for these applications. Extensive simulation studies based on the earnings dynamics literature validate the superiority of our approach over commonly employed alternative weighting schemes. (with by Xu Cheng, Alejandro Sanchez-Becerra)

Related document(s)

Other seminars

To be announced

  • Seminar

  • Econometrics and Empirical Economics Seminar

  • Date 18 May 2027

  • Place Auditorium 4

  • Speaker or organiser Andres Santos (University California - Los Angeles)

Details

To be announced

  • Seminar

  • Econometrics and Empirical Economics Seminar

  • Date 11 May 2027

  • Place Auditorium 4

  • Speaker or organiser Oscar Volpe (Harvard University)

Details

To be announced

  • Seminar

  • Econometrics and Empirical Economics Seminar

  • Date 27 April 2027

  • Place Auditorium 4

  • Speaker or organiser Andreas Fagereng (BI Norwegian Business School)

Details