The cluster robust variance estimator (CRVE) relies on the number of clusters being large. A shorthand "rule of 42'' has emerged, but we show that unbalanced clusters invalidate it. Monte Carlo evidence suggests that rejection frequencies are higher for datasets with 50 clusters proportional to...

Confidence intervals based on cluster-robust covariance matrices can be constructed in many ways. In addition to conventional intervals obtained by inverting Wald (t) tests, the paper studies intervals obtained by inverting LM tests, studentized bootstrap intervals based on the wild cluster...

Inference using difference-in-differences with clustered data requires care. Previous research has shown that t tests based on a cluster-robust variance estimator (CRVE) severely over-reject when there are few treated clusters, that different variants of the wild cluster bootstrap can...

Inference based on cluster-robust standard errors is known to fail when the number of clusters is small, and the wild cluster bootstrap fails dramatically when the number of treated clusters is very small. We propose a family of new procedures called the sub- cluster wild bootstrap. In the case...

Inference using large datasets is not nearly as straightforward as conventional econometric theory suggests when the disturbances are clustered, even with very small intra-cluster correlations. The information contained in such a dataset grows much more slowly with the sample size than it would...

Confidence intervals based on cluster-robust covariance matrices can be constructed in many ways. In addition to conventional intervals obtained by inverting Wald (t) tests, the paper studies intervals obtained by inverting LM tests, studentized bootstrap intervals based on the wild cluster...

Inference using difference-in-differences with clustered data requires care. Previous research has shown that, when there are few treated clusters, t-tests based on cluster-robust variance estimators (CRVEs) severely overreject, and different variants of the wild cluster bootstrap can either...

In many fields of economics, and also in other disciplines, it is hard to justify the assumption that the random error terms in regression models are uncorrelated. It seems more plausible to assume that they are correlated within clusters, such as geographical areas or time periods, but...

We study two cluster-robust variance estimators (CRVEs) for regression models with clustering in two dimensions and give conditions under which t-statistics based on each of them yield asymptotically valid inferences. In particular, one of the CRVEs requires stronger assumptions about the nature...

We discuss when and how to deal with possibly clustered errors in linear regression models. Specifically, we discuss situations in which a regression model may plausibly be treated as having error terms that are arbitrarily correlated within known clusters but uncorrelated across them. The...