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Essays in Microeconometrics
Başlık:
Essays in Microeconometrics
Yazar:
Kamat, Vishal, author.
ISBN:
9780438116627
Yazar Ek Girişi:
Fiziksel Tanımlama:
1 electronic resource (167 pages)
Genel Not:
Source: Dissertation Abstracts International, Volume: 79-11(E), Section: A.
Advisors: Ivan A. Canay.
Özet:
This dissertation consists of three chapters in microeconometrics. Each of the chapters corresponds to a paper that studies topics related to program and treatment effects, which has been the subject of research in econometric theory and empirical applied microeconomics.
The first chapter is a paper that studies identification of program effects in settings with latent choice sets. Here, by latent choice sets, I mean the unobserved heterogeneity that arises when the choice set from which the agent selects treatment is heterogeneous and unobserved by the researcher. The analysis is developed in the context of the Head Start Impact Study, a social experiment designed to evaluate preschools as part of Head Start, the largest early childhood education program in the United States. In this setting, resource constraints limit preschool slots to only a few eligible children through an assignment mechanism that is not observed in the data, which in turn introduces unobserved heterogeneity in the child's choice set of care settings. I propose a nonparametric model that explicitly accounts for latent choice sets in the care setting enrollment decision. In this model, I study various parameters that evaluate Head Start in terms of policies that mandate enrollment and also those that allow voluntary enrollment into Head Start. I show that the identified set for these parameters given the information provided by the study and by various institutional details of the setting can be constructed using a linear programming method. Applying the developed analysis, I find that a significant proportion of parents voluntarily enroll their children into Head Start if provided access and that Head Start is effective in terms of improving short-term test scores across multiple policy dimensions.
The second chapter is a paper that is joint work with Ivan A. Canay and is forthcoming in the The Review of Economic Studies Canay and Kamat (2017). Here we study a question of statistical testing in the regression discontinuity design. In the regression discontinuity design, it is common practice to assess the credibility of the design by testing whether the means of baseline covariates do not change at the cutoff (or threshold) of the running variable. This practice is partly motivated by the stronger implication derived by Lee (2008), who showed that under certain conditions the distribution of baseline covariates in the RDD must be continuous at the cutoff. We propose a permutation test based on the so-called induced ordered statistics for the null hypothesis of continuity of the distribution of baseline covariates at the cutoff; and introduce a novel asymptotic framework to analyze its properties. The asymptotic framework is intended to approximate a small sample phenomenon: even though the total number $n$ of observations may be large, the number of effective observations local to the cutoff is often small. Thus, while traditional asymptotics in RDD require a growing number of observations local to the cutoff as n → infinity, our framework keeps the number q of observations local to the cutoff fixed as n → infinity. The new test is easy to implement, asymptotically valid under weak conditions, exhibits finite sample validity under stronger conditions than those needed for its asymptotic validity, and has favorable power properties relative to tests based on means. In a simulation study, we find that the new test controls size remarkably well across designs. We then use our test to evaluate the plausibility of the design in Lee (2008), a well-known application of the RDD to study incumbency advantage.
The third chapter is a paper that is forthcoming in Econometric Theory Kamat (2017). Here I study the validity of nonparametric tests used in the regression discontinuity design. The null hypothesis of interest is that the average treatment effect at the threshold in the so-called sharp design equals a pre-specified value. I first show that, under assumptions used in the majority of the literature, for any test the power against any alternative is bounded above by its size. This result implies that, under these assumptions, any test with nontrivial power will exhibit size distortions. I next provide a sufficient strengthening of the standard assumptions under which I show that a version of a test suggested in Calonico, et al. (2014a) can control limiting size.
Notlar:
School code: 0163
Konu Başlığı:
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Yer Numarası | Demirbaş Numarası | Shelf Location | Lokasyon / Statüsü / İade Tarihi |
---|---|---|---|
XX(693046.1) | 693046-1001 | Proquest E-Tez Koleksiyonu | Arıyor... |
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