Bounding Treatment Effects by Pooling Limited Information across Observations

Fuente: arXiv
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Auteurs principaux: Lee, Sokbae, Weidner, Martin
Format: Preprint
Publié: 2021
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author Lee, Sokbae
Weidner, Martin
author_facet Lee, Sokbae
Weidner, Martin
contents We provide novel bounds on average treatment effects (on the treated) that are valid under an unconfoundedness assumption. Our bounds are designed to be robust in challenging situations, for example, when the conditioning variables take on a large number of different values in the observed sample, or when the overlap condition is violated. This robustness is achieved by only using limited "pooling" of information across observations. Namely, the bounds are constructed as sample averages over functions of the observed outcomes such that the contribution of each outcome only depends on the treatment status of a limited number of observations. No information pooling across observations leads to so-called "Manski bounds", while unlimited information pooling leads to standard inverse propensity score weighting. We explore the intermediate range between these two extremes and provide corresponding inference methods. We show in Monte Carlo experiments and through two empirical application that our bounds are indeed robust and informative in practice.
format Preprint
id arxiv_https___arxiv_org_abs_2111_05243
institution arXiv
publishDate 2021
record_format arxiv
spellingShingle Bounding Treatment Effects by Pooling Limited Information across Observations
Lee, Sokbae
Weidner, Martin
Econometrics
Methodology
We provide novel bounds on average treatment effects (on the treated) that are valid under an unconfoundedness assumption. Our bounds are designed to be robust in challenging situations, for example, when the conditioning variables take on a large number of different values in the observed sample, or when the overlap condition is violated. This robustness is achieved by only using limited "pooling" of information across observations. Namely, the bounds are constructed as sample averages over functions of the observed outcomes such that the contribution of each outcome only depends on the treatment status of a limited number of observations. No information pooling across observations leads to so-called "Manski bounds", while unlimited information pooling leads to standard inverse propensity score weighting. We explore the intermediate range between these two extremes and provide corresponding inference methods. We show in Monte Carlo experiments and through two empirical application that our bounds are indeed robust and informative in practice.
title Bounding Treatment Effects by Pooling Limited Information across Observations
topic Econometrics
Methodology
url https://arxiv.org/abs/2111.05243