Many studies in economics use instruments or treatments which combine a set of exogenous shocks with other predetermined variables by a known formula. Examples include shift-share instruments and measures of social or spatial spillovers. We review recent econometric tools for this setting, which...

Macroeconomists have long been concerned with the causal effects of monetary policy. When the identification of causal effects is based on a selection-on-observables assumption, non-causality amounts to the conditional independence of outcomes and policy changes. This paper develops a...

In observational studies the overall aim when fitting a model for the propensity score is to reduce bias for an estimator of the causal effect. For this purpose guidelines for covariate selection for propensity score models have been proposed in the causal inference literature. To make the...

Currently available asymptotic results in the literature suggest that matching estimators have higher variance than reweighting estimators. The extant literature comparing the finite sample properties of matching to specific reweighting estimators, however, has concluded that reweighting...

In this paper, we study a general class of semiparametric optimization estimators of a vector-valued parameter. The criterion function depends on two types of infinite-dimensional nuisance parameters: a conditional expectation function that has been estimated nonparametrically using generated...

We solve a class of identification problems for nonparametric and semiparametric models when the endogenous covariate is discrete with unbounded support. Then we proceed with an approach that resolves a polynomial basis problem for the above class of discrete distributions, and for the...

This paper studies single equation instrumental variable models of ordered choice in which explanatory variables may be endogenous. The models are weakly restrictive, leaving unspecified the mechanism that generates endogenous variables. These incomplete models are set, not point, identifying...

In this study, I estimate the average causal treatment effect of grade retention on several educational outcome variables, such as completion of upper secondary school, graduation grades in math and German, as well as average final grade using a data set from Germany. The analysis relies on...

This paper analyzes the identifying power of weak convexity assumptions in treatment effect models with endogenous selection. The counterfactual distributions are constrained either in terms of the response function, or conditional on the realized treatment, and sharp bounds on the potential...

This paper is concerned with developing uniform confidence bands for functions estimated nonparametrically with instrumental variables. We show that a sieve nonparametric instrumental variables estimator is pointwise asymptotically normally mental variables estimator is pointwise asymptotically...