Stationary Stochastic Process e A stochastic process is stationary if for every collection of time indices 11 e Thus, stationarity implies that the x,'s are dentically distributed and that the nature of any correlation between adjacent terms is
Functional form e We' ve seen that a linear regression can really fit nonlinear relationships 2 Can use logs on RHS, LHS or both Can use quadratic forms ofx's Can use interactions ofx's e How do we know if we've gotten the right functional form for our model? Economics 20- Prof anderson
Dummy variables a dummy variable is a variable that takes on the value l or o Examples: male(= 1 if are male, O otherwise), south(=l if in the south, 0 otherwise), etc dummy variables are also called binar variables. for obvious reasons Economics 20- Prof anderson
Consistency e Under the Gauss-Markov assumptionS OLS IS BLUE, but in other cases it wont always be possible to find unbiased estimators o In those cases, we may settle for estimators that are consistent, meaning as n→>∞,the distribution of the estimator collapses to the parameter value Economics 20- Prof anderson
Parallels with Simple regression Bo is still the intercept B, to Bk all called slope parameters u is still the error term(or disturbance) Still need to make a zero conditional mean assumption, so now assume that E(lx,x2…,x)=0 Still minimizing the sum of squared residuals. so have k+l first order conditions Economics 20- Prof anderson
Why study econometrics? Rare in economics(and many other areas without labs! ) to have experimental data Need to use nonexperimental. or observational data to make inferences eImportant to be able to apply economic theory to real world data Economics 20- Prof. Anderson