The DOI matches its Crossref record; 6 of the 6 references it cites were found in a registry or an index.
When Do Covariates Matter? And Which Ones, and How Much?
Open accessAbstract
Authors often add covariates to a base model sequentially either to test a particular coefficient’s “robustness” or to account for the “effects” on this coefficient of adding covariates. This is problematic, due to sequence-sensitivity when added covariates are intercorrelated. Using the omitted variables bias formula, I construct a conditional decomposition that accounts for various covariates’ role in moving base regressors’ coefficients; I also provide a consistent covariance formula. I illustrate this conditional decomposition with NLSY data in an application that exhibits sequence-sensitivity. Related extensions include IV, the fact that my decomposition nests the Oaxaca-Blinder decomposition, and a Hausman-test result.
Overview
The claims and statistics of this paper haven’t been checked yet.
Run the check — free, no account needed. It reads the open-access text and checks the sources it cites.
Integrity signals
Registry
Cites
Statistics
Verification
Claims the paper makes
The claims and statistics of this paper haven’t been checked yet.
Run the check — free, no account needed. It reads the open-access text and checks the sources it cites.
Self-check
Percentages, sums and reported differences re-computed from the paper’s own numbers.
The self-check needs the paper’s full text.
Citations
Cites
Specification Tests in Econometrics
Hausman, J. A. (1978) · Econometrica · doi:10.2307/1913827 · Cited by 18,820
Wage discrimination: Reduced form and structural estimates
Blinder, A. S. (1973) · The Journal of Human Resources · doi:10.2307/144855 · Cited by 6,922
Duflo, E. (2001) · American Economic Review · doi:10.1257/aer.91.4.795 · Cited by 1,940
Income, Health, and Well-Being around the World: Evidence from the Gallup World Poll
Deaton, A. (2008) · Journal of Economic Perspectives · doi:10.1257/jep.22.2.53 · Cited by 1,636
Desegregation and Black Dropout Rates
Guryan, J. (2004) · American Economic Review · doi:10.1257/0002828042002679 · Cited by 388
Changes in the Characteristics of American Youth: Implications for Adult Outcomes
Altonji, J. G., Bharadwaj, P., & Lange, F. (2012) · Journal of Labor Economics · doi:10.1086/666536 · Cited by 158
Cited by
Unobservable Selection and Coefficient Stability: Theory and Evidence
Oster, E. (2019) · Journal of Business & Economic Statistics · doi:10.1080/07350015.2016.1227711 · Cited by 5,367
Women's Empowerment in Action: Evidence from a Randomized Control Trial in Africa
Bandiera, O., Buehren, N., Burgess, R., Goldstein, M., Gulesci, S., Rasul, I., & Sulaiman, M. (2020) · American Economic Journal: Applied Economics · doi:10.1257/app.20170416 · Cited by 311
Papageorge, N. W., Gershenson, S., & Kang, K. M. (2020) · The Review of Economics and Statistics · doi:10.1162/rest_a_00838 · Cited by 178
Algorithmic Risk Assessment in the Hands of Humans
Stevenson, M., & Doleac, J. L. (2020) · doi:10.2139/ssrn.3513695 · Cited by 42
Skills, the gender wage gap, and cities
Bacolod, M. (2017) · Journal of Regional Science · doi:10.1111/jors.12285 · Cited by 40
Metadata
- Authors
- Gelbach, J. B.
- Venue
- Journal of Labor Economics
- Publisher
- University of Chicago Press
- Published
- 2016-04
- Volume
- 34
- Issue
- 2
- Pages
- 509-543
- ISSN
- 0734-306X (ISSN-L)
- 1537-5307
- OpenAlex
- W3123966045
- Cited by
- 581
- References
- 6
- FWCI
- 36.68
- Type
- journal article
- Language
- en
- Open access
- green
About these checks
Registry, retraction, Cites and statistics results are computed, not judged, with one exception: a printed reference that no index lists is read once by a model before it counts as a citation error. Claims are extracted by a model and kept only when their quote appears verbatim in the text; each cited source is then checked, with a model’s help, for whether it says what the claim relies on. Those verdicts can be wrong — read the claim’s quote and the cited source before relying on one.
Statistics and arithmetic are recomputed, not judged.
Confidence bands are shown only for fields calibrated on our annotated test set. None is calibrated yet, so no band is shown.
What counts as a claim ›How we measure confidence ›How we check this ›
Are you an author, or do you see a problem with this page? Request a review
How to cite
Cite CoChat for the checks on this page, and the paper for its own findings.
- This page
- CoChat. (2026). Citation check: When Do Covariates Matter? And Which Ones, and How Much? https://app.cochat.ai/papers/10.1086/683668
- The paper
- Gelbach, J. B. (2016). When Do Covariates Matter? And Which Ones, and How Much? Journal of Labor Economics. https://doi.org/10.1086/683668
Data sources
Bibliographic data: Semantic Scholar, OpenAlex, Crossref.
Contains information from the Semantic Scholar Academic Graph Datasets, made available under the ODC Attribution License (ODC-BY 1.0).
Semantic Scholar’s data is described in: Kinney, R., et al. (2023). The Semantic Scholar Open Data Platform. arXiv:2301.10140.