102
PONTIFICIAE ACADEMIAE SCIENTIARVM SCRIPTA VARIA - 28
Further, it is evident that all full-information methods are
rather sensitive to specification errors of the types that are
unavoidable in the foreseeable state of econometric models
which are only approximate. In particular, such estimators
have the defects of their merits in that by using information
on the entire system to estimate any single equation, they carry
the effects of specification error in any part of the system to
the estimate of any other part. Since it is clear that some
equations may be thought to be better specified than others as
the quality of economic information is by no means constant
in an economy-wide model, this is a highly undesirable feature.
It seems clear that specification error should be quarantined and
hence that limited-information estimators which are known
to accomplish this are preferable to full-information ones in
large models (*). While it may be desirable to use intermediate
estimators which apply full-information type methods to sectors.
rather than to the system as a whole, -the theory of how this
should be done remains to be worked out.
4. LIMITED-INFORMATION ESTIMATORS
4.X. Availability in Practice
While a great many limited-information estimators have
been suggested, in practice, none of them are available for use
in their original form in estimating an economy-wide econome-
tric model. This is the case because all such estimators begin
in one way or another with the ordinary least squares estimates
of the reduced form equations. As we have already seen, such
estimates are likely to be difficult or impossible to secure in all
but the most aggregate models because of the low number of
(1) Fisuer [8, p. 155]
61 Fisher - pag. 18