In an important class of econometric problems, researchers select a target parameter by maximizing the Euclidean norm of a data-dependent vector. Examples that can be cast into this frame include threshold regression models with estimated thresholds, and structural break models with estimated...

In the practice of program evaluation, choosing the covariates and the functional form of the propensity score is an important choice that the researchers make when estimating treatment effects. This paper proposes a data-driven way of averaging the estimators over the candidate specifications...

We present a novel experimental design to study social learning in the laboratory. Subjects have to predict the value of a good in a sequential order. We elicit each subject's belief twice: first ("prior belief"), after he observes his predecessors' action; second ("posterior belief"), after he...

This paper examines the asymptotic behavior of the posterior distribution of a possibly nondifferentiable function g(theta), where is a finite dimensional parameter. The main assumption is that the distribution of the maximum likelihood estimator theta_n, its bootstrap approximation, and the...

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...

Many empirical questions concern target parameters selected through optimization. For example, researchers may be interested in the effectiveness of the best policy found in a randomized trial, or the best-performing investment strategy based on historical data. Such settings give rise to a...

We estimate the impact of piped water and sewers on property values in mid-19th century Chicago. The cost of sewer construction depends sensitively on imperceptible variation in grade, and such variations in grade delay water and sewer service to part of the city. This delay provides...