Heteroskedasticity-consistent covariance matrix estimation:white's estimator and the bootstrap

This paper considers the issue of estimating the covariance matrix of ordinary least squares estimates in a linear regression model when heteroskedasticity is suspected. We perform Monte Carlo simulation on the White estimator, which is commonly used in. empirical research, and also on some alternatives based on different bootstrapping schemes. Our results reveal that the White estimator can be considerably biased when the sample size is not very large, that bias correction via bootstrap does not work well, and that the weighted bootstrap estimators tend to display smaller biases than the White estimator and its variants, under both homoskedasticity and heteroskedasticity. Our results also reveal that the presence of (potentially) influential observations in the design matrix plays an important role in the finite-sample performance of the heteroskedasticity-consistent estimators.