Arellano-Bond LASSO Estimator for Dynamic Linear Panel Models

Abstract

The Arellano-Bond estimator is a fundamental method for dynamic panel data models, widely used in practice. It can be severely biased when the time series dimension of the data, $T$, is long. The source of the bias is the large degree of overidentification. We propose a simple two-step approach to deal with this problem. The first step applies LASSO to the cross-section data at each time period to select the most informative moment conditions, exploiting the approximately sparse structure of these conditions. The second step applies a linear instrumental variable estimator using the instruments constructed from the moment conditions selected in the first step. Using asymptotic sequences where the two dimensions of the panel grow with the sample size, we show that the new estimator is consistent and asymptotically normal under much weaker conditions on $T$ than the Arellano-Bond estimator. Our theory covers models with high-dimensional covariates including multiple lags of the dependent variable and strictly exogenous covariates, which are becoming common in modern applications. We illustrate our approach by applying it to weekly county-level panel data from the United States to study opening K-12 schools and other mitigation policies' short and long-term effects on COVID-19's spread.