Now showing 1 - 2 of 2
  • Publication
    Anchoring bias and covariate nonresponse
    (University College Dublin. Institute for the Study of Social Change (Geary Institute), 2003-05)
    Non-random item nonresponse makes identification of parameters problematic. Such nonresponse can occur with respect to both dependent and conditioning variables. A method often used to reduce nonresponse is that of adding unfolding brackets as follow up to open-ended questions. With these, initial non-respondents can provide additional (incomplete) information on the missing value. However, recent studies suggest that responses to unfolding brackets can lead to a type of bias as a result of 'the anchoring effect'. In this paper, bounding intervals of the type as presented in Horowitz and Manski (1998) are extended to incorporate information provided by bracket respondents while allowing for different types of anchoring, and, therefore,accounting for significant nonresponse in the conditioning set. The theoretical framework is illustrated with empirical evidence based on the 1996 wave of the Health and Retirement Study.
      452
  • Publication
    Nonparametric bounds in the presence of item nonresponse, unfolding brackets, and anchoring
    (University College Dublin. Institute for the Study of Social Change (Geary Institute), 2001-09) ; ;
    Household surveys often suffer from nonresponse on variables such as income, savings or wealth. Recent work by Manski shows how bounds on conditional quantiles of the variable of interest can be derived, allowing for any type of nonrandom item nonresponse. The width between these bounds can be reduced using follow up questions in the form of unfolding brackets for initial item nonrespondents. Recent evidence, however, suggests that such a design is vulnerable to anchoring effects. In this paper Manski’s bounds are extended to incorporate the information provided by the bracket respondents allowing for different forms of anchoring. The new bounds are applied to earnings in the 1996 wave of the Health and Retirement Survey. The results show that the categorical questions can be useful to increase precision of the bounds, even if anchoring is allowed for.
      347