A note on nonidentification in truncated sampling distribution estimation

Abstract

Theoretical constraints on economic model parameters often are in the form of inequality restrictions. For example, many theoretical results are in the form of monotonicity or nonnegativity restrictions. Inequality constraints can truncate sampling distributions of parameter estimators, so that asymptotic normality no longer is possible. Sampling theoretic asymptotic inference is thereby greatly complicated or compromised. In Barnett and Seck (2009), which will be appear in volume 1 number 1 of the new journal, Journal of Statistics: Advances in Theory and Applications, we use numerical methods to investigate the resulting sampling properties of estimation with inequality constraints, with particular emphasis on the method of squaring, which is the most widely used method in applied literature on estimating integrable neoclassical systems of equations. In this note, we make our most important results more widely and easily available.