Split Incentives and Endogenous Inattention in Home Retrofits Uptake: a Story of Selection on Unobservables?

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Stefano Cellini
Keyword(s):  
Selection On Unobservables

scholarly journals Sample-Selection Biases and the Historical Growth Pattern of Children

2020 ◽  
Vol 44 (3) ◽  
pp. 417-444 ◽  
Author(s):  
Eric B. Schneider
Keyword(s):  
Selection Bias ◽  
Growth Pattern ◽  
Sample Selection ◽  
The United States ◽  
Growth Spurt ◽  
Long Run ◽  
Considerable Controversy ◽  
Institutional Ecology ◽  
Selection On Unobservables ◽  
Adult Stature

ABSTRACTBodenhorn et al. (2017) have sparked considerable controversy by arguing that the fall in adult stature observed in military samples in the United States and Britain during industrialization was a figment of selection on unobservables in the samples. While subsequent papers have questioned the extent of the bias (Komlos and A’Hearn 2019; Zimran 2019), there is renewed concern about selection bias in historical anthropometric datasets. Therefore, this article extends Bodenhorn et al.’s discussion of selection bias on unobservables to sources of children’s growth, specifically focusing on biases that could distort the age pattern of growth. Understanding how the growth pattern of children has changed is important because these changes underpinned the secular increase in adult stature and are related to child stunting observed in developing countries today. However, there are significant sources of unobserved selection in historical datasets containing children’s and adolescents’ height and weight. This article highlights, among others, three common sources of bias: (1) positive selection of children into secondary school in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries; (2) distorted height by age profiles created by age thresholds for enlistment in the military; and (3) changing institutional ecology that determines to which institutions children are sent. Accounting for these biases adjusts the literature in two ways: evidence of a strong pubertal growth spurt in the nineteenth century is weaker than formerly acknowledged and some long-run analyses of changes in children’s growth are too biased to be informative, especially for Japan.

Estimation and Inference for Linear Models with Two-Way Fixed Effects and Sparsely Matched Data

2020 ◽  
Vol 102 (1) ◽  
pp. 1-16 ◽  
Author(s):  
Valentin Verdier
Keyword(s):  
Student Achievement ◽  
Instrumental Variables ◽  
Fixed Effects ◽  
Dynamic Models ◽  
Linear Models ◽  
Point Estimation ◽  
Inference Method ◽  
Valid Inference ◽  
Matched Data ◽  
Selection On Unobservables

Models with multiway fixed effects are frequently used to address selection on unobservables. The data used for estimating these models often contain few observations per value of either indexing variable (sparsely matched data). I show that this sparsity has important implications for inference and propose an asymptotically valid inference method based on subsetting. Sparsity also has important implications for point estimation when covariates or instrumental variables are sequentially exogenous (e.g., dynamic models), and I propose a new estimator for these models. Finally, I illustrate these methods by providing estimates of the effect of class size reductions on student achievement.

Do We Really Know the WTO Cures Cancer?

2016 ◽  
Vol 48 (4) ◽  
pp. 903-928 ◽  
Author(s):  
Stephen Chaudoin ◽  
Jude Hays ◽  
Raymond Hicks
Keyword(s):  
Sensitivity Analysis ◽  
Endangered Species ◽  
World Trade ◽  
International Institutions ◽  
Theoretical Knowledge ◽  
Sensitivity Tests ◽  
Dependent Variables ◽  
Environmental Treaty ◽  
Replication Experiment ◽  
Selection On Unobservables

This article uses a replication experiment of ninety-four specifications from sixteen different studies to show the severity of the problem of selection on unobservables. Using a variety of approaches, it shows that membership in the General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade/World Trade Organization has a significant effect on a surprisingly high number of dependent variables (34 per cent) that have little or no theoretical relationship to the WTO. To make the exercise even more conservative, the study demonstrates that membership in a low-impact environmental treaty, the Convention on Trade in Endangered Species, yields similarly high false positive rates. The authors advocate theoretically informed sensitivity analysis, showing how prior theoretical knowledge conditions the crucial choice of covariates for sensitivity tests. While the current study focuses on international institutions, the arguments also apply to other subfields and applications.

Estimation of Antipsychotic Effects on Hospitalization Risk in a Naturalistic Study With Selection on Unobservables

2004 ◽  
Vol 192 (2) ◽  
pp. 119-128 ◽  
Author(s):  
David S. Salkever ◽  
Eric P. Slade ◽  
Mustafa Karakus ◽  
Liisa Palmer ◽  
Patricia A. Russo
Keyword(s):  
Naturalistic Study ◽  
Selection On Unobservables

scholarly journals Bridging the gap in pension participation: how much can universal tax-deferred pension coverage hope to achieve?

2014 ◽  
Vol 13 (4) ◽  
pp. 439-459 ◽  
Author(s):  
NADIA S. KARAMCHEVA ◽  
GEOFFREY SANZENBACHER
Keyword(s):  
Low Income ◽  
Pension Plan ◽  
Defined Contribution ◽  
Policy Makers ◽  
Individual Retirement Accounts ◽  
Defined Contribution Plans ◽  
Retirement Accounts ◽  
Pension Coverage ◽  
Selection On Unobservables ◽  
Do So

AbstractIn light of the declining pension coverage of low-income workers, policy makers have discussed requiring all employers to offer individual retirement accounts, similar to defined contribution plans. How likely to participate are workers who currently do not have access to a pension plan? We address this question by using plausibly exogenous variation in pension-plan availability to estimate the determinants of participation in a standard selection on unobservables model. We find that currently uncovered low-income workers are fairly likely to participate in a newly offered plan, yet they are much less likely to do so than currently covered workers.

Heterogeneous Returns to Training

2006 ◽  
Vol 226 (1) ◽  
Author(s):  
Anja Kuckulenz ◽  
Michael Maier
Keyword(s):  
Instrumental Variables ◽  
Unobserved Heterogeneity ◽  
Empirical Work ◽  
Expected Return ◽  
Returns To Schooling ◽  
Recent Advances ◽  
Returns To Training ◽  
The Impact ◽  
Selection On Unobservables

SummaryEmpirical work on the wage impact of training has noted that unobserved heterogeneity of training participants should play a role. The expected return to training, which partly depends on unobservable characteristics, is likely to be a crucial criterion in the decision to take part in training or not. We try to account for this fact by using recent advances in estimating returns to schooling, which allow for selection on unobservables, and apply it to estimating the impact of training on earnings. Allowing heterogeneity to be unobserved by the econometrician, but assuming that individuals may act upon this heterogeneity, completely changes the interpretation and properties of commonly used estimators. Our results based on local instrumental variables suggest that traditional estimates of the wage impact of training overestimate this effect.

scholarly journals Towards the Greater Good? EU Commissioners’ Nationality and Budget Allocation in the European Union

2018 ◽  
Vol 10 (1) ◽  
pp. 214-239 ◽  
Author(s):  
Kai Gehring ◽  
Stephan A. Schneider
Keyword(s):  
European Union ◽  
Country Of Origin ◽  
Budget Allocation ◽  
The European Union ◽  
Percentage Point Increase ◽  
Point Increase ◽  
Greater Good ◽  
Selection On Unobservables ◽  
Allocation Decisions

We demonstrate that the nationalities of EU Commissioners influence budget allocation decisions in favor of their country of origin. Our focus is on the Commissioners for Agriculture, who are exclusively responsible for a specific fund that accounts for the largest share of the overall EU budget. On average, providing the Commissioner causes a 1 percentage point increase in a country’s share of the overall EU budget, which corresponds to 850 million euros per year. There are no different pretreatment trends and the magnitude of the bias from selection-on-unobservables would have to be implausibly high to account for the estimated coefficient. (JEL D72, F55, H61, H77)

Job Flexibility and Occupational Selection in Ghana: An Application of Maximum Simulated Likelihood†

2019 ◽  
Vol 28 (5) ◽  
pp. 479-510
Author(s):  
Jonathan Lain
Keyword(s):  
Occupational Choice ◽  
Income Generation ◽  
Cross Sectional ◽  
Maximum Simulated Likelihood ◽  
Simulated Likelihood ◽  
Self Employment ◽  
Job Flexibility ◽  
Multinomial Choice ◽  
Occupational Selection ◽  
Selection On Unobservables

Abstract In many African labour markets, the vast majority of self-employed workers are female. It is often hypothesised that self-employment enables workers to balance income-generation with caring for children and other domestic tasks and, since responsibility for these activities is divided unequally in the household, this effect is stronger for women than men. However, testing whether ‘job flexibility’ matters is difficult because variables that proxy for domestic obligations—such as the number of dependents in the household—may be endogenous to occupational choice. In this paper, we build a new estimator using maximum simulated likelihood that allows us to use selection on observables as a guide to selection on unobservables within the multinomial choice problem individuals face when deciding their occupation. We apply this approach to detailed cross-sectional data from Ghana. Our results show that having extra dependents in the household pushes women towards own account self-employment substantially more than men, even under more conservative assumptions about the extent of endogeneity.

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