We examine the use of instrumental variable (IV) methods to measure the effect of a ceteris paribus change in an endogenous variable on an ordered outcome. Specifically, we use these methods to investigate the effect of neighborhood characteristics on subjective well-being (SWB) among participants in the Moving to Opportunity (MTO) housing voucher experiment. We find that the estimated positive effect of a decrease in neighborhood poverty on SWB is sensitive to the specification of the first stage auxiliary equation for endogenous neighborhood poverty. Our results highlight the influential role of control function restrictions in complete triangular models.

Dealing with endogenous regressors is a central challenge of applied research. The standard solution is to use instrumental variables that are assumed to be uncorrelated with unobservables. We instead allow the instrumental variable to be correlated with the error term, but we assume the correlation between the instrumental variable and the error term has the same sign as the correlation between the endogenous regressor and the error term and that the instrumental variable is less correlated with the error term than is the endogenous regressor. Using these assumptions, we derive analytic bounds for the parameters. We demonstrate that the method can generate useful (set) estimates by using it to estimate demand for differentiated products.