Regression Details
Few things are as confusing to applied researchers as the role of sample weights. Even now, 20 years post – Ph. D., we read the section of the Stata manual on weighting with some dismay. Weights can be used in a number of ways, and how they are used may well matter for your results. Regrettably, however, the case for or against weighting is often less than clear-cut, as are the specifics of how the weights should be programmed. A detailed discussion of weighting pros and cons is beyond the scope of this book. See Pfefferman (1993) and Deaton (1997) for two perspectives. In this brief subsection, we provide a few guidelines and a rationale for our approach to weighting.
A simple rule of thumb for weighting regression is use weights when they make it more likely th...
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