Re: RE: st: Beta values in QREG

[Maarten Buis <maartenlbuis@gmail.com>]

On Mon, Jun 24, 2013 at 10:50 PM, Santos Silva, J.M.C. wrote:
> As for Maarten's argument of "clash of logics", I think I do
> not agree with it for two reasons. First, you may be interested in estimating
> quantile regression even if the data have finite second (and higher order)
> moments <snip> Second, even if you are using quantile regression because
> your y does not have finite second moments, that does not mean that your
> regressors also do not have second moments <snip>

I did not say that you would use quantile regression when the moments
do not exist, I only said that you would use quantile regression when
you wanted to avoid using the moments. Particular in skewed
distributions there are good reasons for prefering percentiles over
moments, even if the moments exist. In that case it is weird to use a
technique whose purpose is to avoid those moments, and than use them
again to define the scale of your dependent variable... I made an
argument in the style "Not everything you can technically do makes
substantive sense".

-- Maarten

---------------------------------
Maarten L. Buis
WZB
Reichpietschufer 50
10785 Berlin
Germany

http://www.maartenbuis.nl
---------------------------------
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