Welfare Analysis in Dynamic Models

Fuente: arXiv
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Auteurs principaux: Chernozhukov, Victor, Newey, Whitney, Semenova, Vira
Format: Preprint
Publié: 2019
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author Chernozhukov, Victor
Newey, Whitney
Semenova, Vira
author_facet Chernozhukov, Victor
Newey, Whitney
Semenova, Vira
contents This paper introduces metrics for welfare analysis in dynamic models. We develop estimation and inference for these parameters even in the presence of a high-dimensional state space. Examples of welfare metrics include average welfare, average marginal welfare effects, and welfare decompositions into direct and indirect effects similar to Oaxaca (1973) and Blinder (1973). We derive dual and doubly robust representations of welfare metrics that facilitate debiased inference. For average welfare, the value function does not have to be estimated. In general, debiasing can be applied to any estimator of the value function, including neural nets, random forests, Lasso, boosting, and other high-dimensional methods. In particular, we derive Lasso and Neural Network estimators of the value function and associated dynamic dual representation and establish associated mean square convergence rates for these functions. Debiasing is automatic in the sense that it only requires knowledge of the welfare metric of interest, not the form of bias correction. The proposed methods are applied to estimate a dynamic behavioral model of teacher absenteeism in \cite{DHR} and associated average teacher welfare.
format Preprint
id arxiv_https___arxiv_org_abs_1908_09173
institution arXiv
publishDate 2019
record_format arxiv
spellingShingle Welfare Analysis in Dynamic Models
Chernozhukov, Victor
Newey, Whitney
Semenova, Vira
Machine Learning
Econometrics
This paper introduces metrics for welfare analysis in dynamic models. We develop estimation and inference for these parameters even in the presence of a high-dimensional state space. Examples of welfare metrics include average welfare, average marginal welfare effects, and welfare decompositions into direct and indirect effects similar to Oaxaca (1973) and Blinder (1973). We derive dual and doubly robust representations of welfare metrics that facilitate debiased inference. For average welfare, the value function does not have to be estimated. In general, debiasing can be applied to any estimator of the value function, including neural nets, random forests, Lasso, boosting, and other high-dimensional methods. In particular, we derive Lasso and Neural Network estimators of the value function and associated dynamic dual representation and establish associated mean square convergence rates for these functions. Debiasing is automatic in the sense that it only requires knowledge of the welfare metric of interest, not the form of bias correction. The proposed methods are applied to estimate a dynamic behavioral model of teacher absenteeism in \cite{DHR} and associated average teacher welfare.
title Welfare Analysis in Dynamic Models
topic Machine Learning
Econometrics
url https://arxiv.org/abs/1908.09173