Comparing Distributional Policy Parameters between Populations with Different Outcome Structures

In this study, we promote the estimation of alternative distributional policy parameters that identify horizontal changes in conditional distributions at quantiles from a reference distribution. The motivation underlying the introduction of these new parameters is the comparison of distributional policy parameters between populations with different outcome structures. If the outcome structures of different populations are not taken into consideration, then such comparisons could potentially yield to results that cannot be associated with the policy variation of interest. The suggested alternative distributional policy parameters account for the outcome structure and enable straightforward comparisons between different populations. The relevance of these parameters is demonstrated in an application of the Job Training Partnership Act.