This paper modifies the Wald development of statistical decision theory to offer new perspective on the performance of certain statistical treatment rules. We study the quantile performance of test rules, ones that use the outcomes of hypothesis tests to allocate a population to two treatments....

Planners of surveys and experiments that partially identify parameters of interest face trade offs between using limited resources to reduce sampling error and using them to reduce the extent of partial identification. I evaluate these trade offs in a simple statistical problem with normally...

We use experimental data to disentangle signaling and budgetary effects of price on wine demand. The experimental design allow us to isolate in a simple and intuitive way the two effects. The signaling effect is present and nonlinear: it is strongly positive between EUR3 and EUR5, and...

One of the main objectives of empirical analysis of experiments and quasi-experiments is to inform policy decisions that determine the allocation of treatments to individuals with different observable covariates. We propose the Empirical Welfare Maximization (EWM) method, which estimates a...

This paper models the use of statistical hypothesis testing in regulatory approval. A privately informed agent proposes an innovation. Its approval is beneficial to the proponent, but potentially detrimental to the regulator. The proponent can conduct a costly clinical trial to persuade the...

This paper models the use of statistical hypothesis testing in regulatory approval. A privately informed agent proposes an innovation. Its approval is beneficial to the proponent, but potentially detrimental to the regulator. The proponent can conduct a costly clinical trial to persuade the...

The goal of many randomized experiments and quasi-experimental studies in economics is to inform policies that aim to raise incomes and reduce economic inequality. A policy maximizing the sum of individual incomes may not be desirable if it magnifies economic inequality and post-treatment...

One of the main objectives of empirical analysis of experiments and quasi-experiments is to inform policy decisions that determine the allocation of treatments to individuals with different observable covariates. We study the properties and implementation of the Empirical Welfare Maximization...