This paper examines a commonly used measure of persuasion whose precise interpretation has been obscure in the literature. By using the potential outcome framework, we define the causal persuasion rate by a proper conditional probability of taking the action of interest with a persuasive message...

When there are multiple outcome series of interest, Synthetic Control analyses typically proceed by estimating separate weights for each outcome. In this paper, we instead propose estimating a common set of weights across outcomes, by balancing either a vector of all outcomes or an index or...

Using many valid instrumental variables has the potential to improve efficiency but makes the usual inference procedures inaccurate. We give corrected standard errors, an extension of Bekker (1994) to nonnormal disturbances, that adjust for many instruments. We find that this adujstment is...

In this paper, the regression discontinuity design (RDD) is generalized to account for differences in observed covariates X in a fully nonparametric way. It is shown that the treatment effect can be estimated at the rate for one-dimensional nonparametric regression irrespective of the dimension...

We provide a general class of tests for correlation in time series, spatial, spatio-temporal and cross-sectional data. We motivate our focus by reviewing how computational and theoretical difficulties of point estimation mount as one moves from regularly-spaced time series data, through forms of...

I study inverse probability weighted M-estimation under a general missing data scheme. The cases covered that do not previously appear in the literature include M-estimation with missing data due to a censored survival time, propensity score estimation of the average treatment effect for linear...

For vectors x and w, let r(x,w) be a function that can be nonparametrically estimated consistently and asymptotically normally. We provide consistent, asymptotically normal estimators for the functions g and h, where r(x,w) = h[g(x),w], g is linearly homogeneous and h is monotonic in g. This...

This paper studies the estimation of conditional quantiles of counts. Given the discreteness of the data, some smoothness has to be artificially imposed on the problem. The methods currently available to estimate quantiles of count data either assume that the counts result from the...

This paper develops IV estimators for unconditional quantile treatment effects (QTE) when the treatment selection is endogenous. In contrast to conditional QTE, i.e. the effects conditional on a large number of covariates X, the unconditional QTE summarize the effects of a treatment for the...

We estimate the effects of active labour market policies (ALMP) on subsequent employment by nonparametric instrumental variables and matching estimators. Very informative administrative Swiss data with detailed regional information are combined with exogenous regional variation in programme...