Re: st: Nonconvergence in subset of bootstrap samples doesn't show up in e(N_misreps)

[Christoph Siemroth <christoph.siemroth@gess.uni-mannheim.de>]

Hi Emilia,

I had a similar problem, where I bootstraped with various nonlinear 
models estimated via ML, and for some bootstrap replications it didn't 
converge. An option that seems reasonable is to cap the maximum number 
of iterations of ML via option ", iterate(#)" in the estimation command 
and then use e(converged)!=1 to exclude those failed samples. This is 
possible with the ",reject(e(converged)!=1)" option of bootstrap. I use 
something like

bootstrap, reps(25) reject(e(converged)!=1): nbreg depvar $a, iterate(30)

This was suggested by Jeff Pitblado, 
http://www.stata.com/statalist/archive/2006-04/msg00721.html

Although it is technically possible, could that render bootstrapping 
results biased? After all, we are systematically excluding some 
bootstrap samples.

best, Christoph

----
Emilia Tjernström wrote:

Dear Statalist,

I am estimating a panel data quantile model, bootstrapping the
standard errors from -sqreg- using -bootstrap-. Some small portion of
the bootstrap replications fail to converge, and I believe that I need
to account for the failed replications when creating the bootstrapped
variance-covariance matrix. To my surprise, however, both e(N_reps)
and e(reps) after -bs- indicate that there are no incomplete
replications or missing results, respectively. [The reason that I'm
bootstrapping is that I need to draw households rather than individual
observations, to take into account the dependence of outcomes for a
given household  -- I'm following the approach to panel data quantile
estimation suggested in Abrevaya and Dahl (2008) "The Effects of Birth
Inputs on Birthweight." Journal of Business & Economic Statistics
26(4): 379–397.]

My plan was to use the number of completed reps (i.e. e(N_reps)) in
the last line of code below to account for any failed replications.
Here is some code:

--- (Using Stata 10)
* Bootstrapping
bs _b, rep($reps) noi cl(hhid) seed($seed) saving(`y'_sqreg, replace
double every(100)): sqreg `y' $xvars, quantile(.25 .5 .75) wlsiter(30)
reps(2)
local comp_reps = e(N_reps)
local failreps = e(N_misreps)
di "The nr of complete replications: " `comp_reps' " and incomplete
reps: " `failreps'
mat li e(reps)

* Obtaining var-cov matrix
(... using the data saved from the bootstrap)
matrix accum VCE_`y' = q*, deviations noconstant
matrix VCE_`y' = VCE_`y'/(`comp_reps'-1)
---

Despite some failures to converge, e(N_reps) always equals $reps,
e(N_misreps) always equals 0, and all the entries in e(reps) equal
$reps
Am I missing something? Is there a better way to count the number of
successful bootstrap replications?

Thank you very much for your time!
Emilia
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