Solved – Omitted variable bias and the constant term

assumptionsbias

For omitted variable bias to occur when a variable is left out of a regression, there is one axiom and one condition that must be fulfilled:

  1. (Axiom) By definition, the coefficient of the variable has to not be equal to zero (or it can't even be considered an omitted variable).
  2. (Condition) The omitted variable must be correlated with some regressor, which means the regressor will be correlated with the error term, violating gauss markov assumptions and generating bias.

Problem: Consider a model of the most basic form:

$$y_i = \alpha + \beta x_i + e_i$$

Now, we all know that leaving out alpha (corrsponding variable which is 1 for all of the observation), will cause bias in the beta parameter. However, a constant can't be correlated with $x_i$, so something is off here. Where is the error?

Best Answer

One of the assumptions in gauss markov theory is strong exogeneity: $E(u|x)=0$. So that, conditional on x, error term u should have zero mean.

When $x=0$, the above assumption means $E(u|x=0)=0$. Therefore, when the true constant term is not zero but been omitted, the assumption that $E(u|x=0)=0$ is not satisfied.