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Help regarding White's Heteroscedasticity Correction

4 messages · Kishore, John C Frain, John Fox +1 more

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Generally in the presence of heteroskedasticity of unknown form OLS
produces consistent estimates of your regression coefficients. The
estimates of  standard errors are biased in the presence of
heteroskedasticity,  White's  procedure is a way of producing
consistent estimates of the standard errors.  It does not change the
estimates of the coefficients.  It does not change the residuals.

    Patterns in your residuals may show up as heteroskedasticity when
tested but they may be an indication of wrong functional form or of
missing variables or of some other form of misspecification.

Best Regards

John

2009/2/10 Kishore <gladikishore at gmail.com>:

  
    
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Dear Kishore,

Yes, White's heteroscedasticity-consistent standard errors are just that --
standard errors for the OLS coefficients that are consistent in the presence
of heteroscedasticity. The coefficients themselves don't change. There is an
issue here: although the standard errors and OLS coefficients are
consistent, the OLS estimates lose efficiency. If you know that pattern of
heteroscedasticity, then you might get more efficient estimates by taking it
into account, e.g., in weighted-least-squares regression, or, if the
residual spread increases with the fitted values, by transforming the
response.

I hope this helps,
 John

------------------------------
John Fox, Professor
Department of Sociology
McMaster University
Hamilton, Ontario, Canada
web: socserv.mcmaster.ca/jfox
On
http://www.R-project.org/posting-guide.html
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or simultaneously estimate the coefficients and variance structure via
nlme::gls and its 'weights' argument...
On Tue, Feb 10, 2009 at 7:57 AM, John Fox <jfox at mcmaster.ca> wrote: