BIAS REDUCTION FOR DYNAMIC NONLINEAR PANEL MODELS WITH FIXED EFFECTS

Abstract

The fixed effects estimator of panel models can be severely biased because of well-known incidental parameter problems. It is shown that this bias can be reduced in nonlinear dynamic panel models. We consider asymptotics where n and T grow at the same rate as an approximation that facilitates comparison of bias properties. Under these asymptotics, the bias-corrected estimators we propose are centered at the truth, whereas fixed effects estimators are not. We discuss several examples and provide Monte Carlo evidence for the small sample performance of our procedure.