Average treatment effects estimands can present significant bias under the presence of outliers. Moreover, outliers can be particularly hard to detect, creating bias and inconsistency in the semi-parametric ATE estimads. In this paper, we use Monte Carlo simulations to demonstrate that...

Structural econometric methods are often criticized for being sensitive to functional form assumptions. We study parametric estimators of the local average treatment effect (LATE) derived from a widely used class of latent threshold crossing models and show they yield LATE estimates...

This study examines the causal effects of Dutch language proficiency of immigrants from four main source countries on their labour market and social integration outcomes. Language proficiency appears ranked according to linguistic distance to The Netherlands, a ranking that even holds for the...

We analyse all the major sources of direct and indirect R&D subsidies in Norway in the period 2002-2013 and compare their effects on individual firms’ performance. Firms that received support are matched with a control group of firms that did not receive support using a combination of...

During 2007 and 2008 smoking bans were gradually implemented in all of Germany’s sixteen federal states to prohibit smoking in bars, restaurants, and dance clubs. Aimed at reducing smoking and improving health, tobacco control policies are often controversially discussed as they entail...

This paper offers a thesis for why the US overtook the UK and other European countries in the 20th century in both aggregate and per capita GDP as a case study of recent models of endogenous growth, where "human capital" is the engine of growth. By human capital we mean an intangible asset, best...

We analyse all the major sources of direct and indirect R&D subsidies in Norway in the period 2002-2013 and compare their effects on individual firms' performance. Firms that received support are matched with a control group of firms that did not receive support using a combination of...

Currently there is little practical advice on which treatment effect estimator to use when trying to adjust for observable differences. A recent suggestion is to compare the performance of estimators in simulations that somehow mimic the empirical context. Two ways to run such 'empirical Monte...

It is standard practice in applied work to study the effect of a binary variable (“treatment”) on an outcome of interest using linear models with additive effects. In this paper I study the interpretation of the ordinary and two-stage least squares estimands in such models when treatment...

This paper develops a framework for analyzing the outcome of experiments carried out on forward-looking subjects. Natural experiments, unexpected policy changes, and true experiments are all included in the framework as special cases. These concepts are defined in conjunction with explicit...