UC San Diego

Microeconomic panel data, also known as longitudinal data or repeated measures, allow the researcher to observe the same individual across time. One of the advantages of panel data is that they allow the researcher to control for unobservable individual heterogeneity. The linear fixed effects model is the most commonly used method in empirical work to control for unobservable heterogeneity. Chapter 1 reviews the special features of the linear fixed effects model in detail, giving special attention to the definition of fixed effects and correlated random effects. It discusses the issues that arise when we move from a linear model to fully nonseparable models and reviews the two strands of the literature that are relevant for this dissertation: (1) the literature on nonlinear parametric panel data models with fixed effects, (2) the literature on nonparametric identification in nonseparable panel data models. Chapter 2 falls under the parametric nonlinear panel data models with fixed effects. Nonlinear panel data models with fixed effects are an important example in econometrics where the incidental parameter problem arises and the maximum likelihood estimator (MLE) is asymptotically biased. Bias correction of the MLE achieves consistency without increasing the asymptotic variance. Chapter 2 proposes a shrinkage estimator that combines that is shown to lead to a higher-order mean-square error improvement over the analytical bias-corrected estimator. Chapter 3 falls under the literature on nonparametric identification in nonseparable panel data models. Starting from a general DGP that exhibits nonseparability of the structural function, arbitrary individual and time heterogeneity, I give a necessary and sufficient condition for the point-identification of the APE for a subpopulation. This condition is then used to characterize the trade-off between assumptions on unobservable heterogeneity and the structural function that achieve identification. The identifying assumptions here have clear testable implications on the distribution of observables. I hence propose bootstrap-adjusted Kolmogorv- Smirnov and Cramer-von-Mises statistics to test these implications. Chapter 4 is an empirical paper that studies the issue of manipulation of air pollution data by Chinese cities. It applies tests similar in spirit to the tests proposed in Chapter 3 to test the presence of manipulation