Abstract
Missing data are the most common problem in
many research areas. For cross-section and time-series data, imputation can be
a challenging problem. The most widely used method for filling missing
observations is the multiple imputation which increase the number of the
available data and thereby reducing biases that may occur when observations
with missing values are simply deleted. The main purpose of this paper is to
employ a bootstrapping expectation–maximization (EM) algorithm in order to
impute missing values mainly to economic data. In the application we use a
dataset that is consisted by annual panel data for the 27 countries of the
European Union covering the period 2000-2017. The data were obtained from the
databases of World Bank and Eurostat namely the Global Financial Development
Database, The Standardized World Income Inequality Database by Solt (2019) and
the World Development Indicators. Different indicators were chosen representing
the development of banking system and stock markets, economic growth, economic
inequality, innovation, fiscal policy, physical and human capital, and trade
openness. Finally, diagnostic tools are used inspecting the imputations that
are created.
Keywords: Multiple imputation, Amelia II, Economic data, Financial
development, Inequality.