Well........, not really!
It might seem that way on the face of it, but that's because you're probably using a totally inappropriate measure of what's (statistically) significant, and what's not.
I talked a bit about this issue in a previous post, where I said:
There's really no excuse for this, because there are some well-established guidelines to help us. In fact, as we'll see, some of them have been around since at least the 1970's.
Let's take a quick look at this, because it's something that all students need to be made aware of as we work more and more with "big data". Students certainly won't gain this awareness by looking at the interpretation of the results in the vast majority of empirical economics papers that use even sort-of-large samples!
It might seem that way on the face of it, but that's because you're probably using a totally inappropriate measure of what's (statistically) significant, and what's not.
I talked a bit about this issue in a previous post, where I said:
"Granger (1998, 2003This general point, namely that our chosen significance level should be decreased as the sample size grows, is pretty well understood by most statisticians and econometricians. (For example, see Good, 1982.) However, it's usually ignored by the authors of empirical economics studies based on samples of thousands (or more) observations. Moreover, a lot of practitioners seem to be unsure of just how much they should revise their significance levels (or re-interpret their p-values) in such circumstances.) has reminded us that if the sample size is sufficiently large, then it's virtually impossible not to reject almost any hypothesis. So, if the sample is very large and the p-values associated with the estimated coefficients in a regression model are of the order of, say, 0.10 or even 0.05, then this really bad news. Much, much, smaller p-values are needed before we get all excited about 'statistically significant' results when the sample size is in the thousands, or even bigger."
There's really no excuse for this, because there are some well-established guidelines to help us. In fact, as we'll see, some of them have been around since at least the 1970's.
Let's take a quick look at this, because it's something that all students need to be made aware of as we work more and more with "big data". Students certainly won't gain this awareness by looking at the interpretation of the results in the vast majority of empirical economics papers that use even sort-of-large samples!
