ON GMM INFERENCE: PARTIAL IDENTIFICATION, IDENTIFICATION STRENGTH, AND NONSTANDARD ASYMPTOTICS

This paper analyses aspects of generalized method of moments (GMM) inference in moment equality models in settings where standard regularity conditions may break down. Explicit analytic formulations for the asymptotic distributions of estimable functions of the GMM estimator and statistics based on the GMM criterion function are derived under relatively mild assumptions. The moment Jacobian is allowed to be rank deficient, so first order identification may fail, the values of the Jacobian singular values are not constrained, thereby allowing for varying levels of identification strength, the long-run variance of the moment conditions can be singular, and the GMM criterion function weighting matrix may also be chosen sub-optimally. The large-sample properties are derived without imposing a specific structure on the functional form of the moment conditions. Closed-form expressions for the distributions are presented that can be evaluated using standard software without recourse to bootstrap or simulation methods. The practical operation of the results is illustrated via examples involving instrumental variables estimation of a structural equation with endogenous regressors and a common CH features model.