Selecting Experimental Sites for External Validity
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arXiv
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| Hauptverfasser: | , , , , , , , |
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| Format: | Preprint |
| Veröffentlicht: |
2024
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| _version_ | 1866913358539653120 |
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| author | Gechter, Michael Hirano, Keisuke Lee, Jean Mahmud, Mahreen Mondal, Orville Morduch, Jonathan Ravindran, Saravana Shonchoy, Abu S. |
| author_facet | Gechter, Michael Hirano, Keisuke Lee, Jean Mahmud, Mahreen Mondal, Orville Morduch, Jonathan Ravindran, Saravana Shonchoy, Abu S. |
| contents | Policy decisions often depend on evidence generated elsewhere. We take a Bayesian decision-theoretic approach to choosing where to experiment to optimize external validity. We frame external validity through a policy lens, developing a prior specification for the joint distribution of site-level treatment effects using a microeconometric structural model and allowing for other sources of heterogeneity. With data from South Asia, we show that, relative to basing policies on experiments in optimal sites, large efficiency losses result from instead using evidence from randomly-selected sites or, conversely, from sites with the largest expected treatment effects. |
| format | Preprint |
| id |
arxiv_https___arxiv_org_abs_2405_13241 |
| institution | arXiv |
| publishDate | 2024 |
| record_format | arxiv |
| spellingShingle | Selecting Experimental Sites for External Validity Gechter, Michael Hirano, Keisuke Lee, Jean Mahmud, Mahreen Mondal, Orville Morduch, Jonathan Ravindran, Saravana Shonchoy, Abu S. General Economics Economics Policy decisions often depend on evidence generated elsewhere. We take a Bayesian decision-theoretic approach to choosing where to experiment to optimize external validity. We frame external validity through a policy lens, developing a prior specification for the joint distribution of site-level treatment effects using a microeconometric structural model and allowing for other sources of heterogeneity. With data from South Asia, we show that, relative to basing policies on experiments in optimal sites, large efficiency losses result from instead using evidence from randomly-selected sites or, conversely, from sites with the largest expected treatment effects. |
| title | Selecting Experimental Sites for External Validity |
| topic | General Economics Economics |
| url | https://arxiv.org/abs/2405.13241 |