Identifying treatment effects in the presence of confounded types

A-Tier
Journal: Journal of Econometrics
Year: 2023
Volume: 234
Issue: 2
Pages: 479-511

Score contribution per author:

4.022 = (α=2.01 / 1 authors) × 2.0x A-tier

α: calibrated so average coauthorship-adjusted count equals average raw count

Abstract

In this paper, I consider identification of treatment effects when the treatment is endogenous. The use of instrumental variables is a popular solution to deal with endogeneity, but this may give misleading answers when the instrument is invalid. I show that when an (unobserved) instrument is invalid due to correlation with the first stage unobserved heterogeneity, a proxy for the instrument helps partially identify not only the local average treatment effect, but also the entire potential outcomes distributions for compliers. I exploit the fact that the distribution of the observed outcome in each group defined by the treatment and the instrument is a mixture of the distributions of interest. I write the identified set in the form of conditional moment inequalities, and provide an easily implementable inference procedure. Under some tail restrictions, the potential outcomes distributions are point-identified for compliers. Finally, I illustrate my methodology on data from the National Longitudinal Survey of Young Men to estimate returns to college using college proximity as a proxy for the instrument low college cost. I find that a college degree increases the average hourly wage of the compliers by 15%–30%.

Technical Details

RePEc Handle
repec:eee:econom:v:234:y:2023:i:2:p:479-511
Journal Field
Econometrics
Author Count
1
Added to Database
2026-01-25