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What Is the Value Added by Using Causal Machine Learning Methods in a Welfare Experiment Evaluation?

Anthony Strittmatter

arXiv 16 Dec 2018 · Econometrics · publishedLabour Economics (2023) · 6 citations (OpenAlex)

arXiv:1812.06533 · PDF · DOI · OpenAlex · Extracted main text

Abstract

Recent studies have proposed causal machine learning (CML) methods to estimate conditional average treatment effects (CATEs). In this study, I investigate whether CML methods add value compared to conventional CATE estimators by re-evaluating Connecticut's Jobs First welfare experiment. This experiment entails a mix of positive and negative work incentives. Previous studies show that it is hard to tackle the effect heterogeneity of Jobs First by means of CATEs. I report evidence that CML methods can provide support for the theoretical labor supply predictions. Furthermore, I document reasons why some conventional CATE estimators fail and discuss the limitations of CML methods.

Citation extraction

36
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Most heavily cited references

The works this paper leans on most, across its whole bibliography — not restricted to papers in our corpus. Ranked by composite intensity, which combines how often a work is mentioned, how many sections mention it, and how much of that falls in the main text rather than the appendix.

ReferenceIntensityMentionsSectionsMain text
1Bitler, Gelbach, and Hoynes (2006) What Mean Impacts Miss: Distributional Effects of Welfare Reform Experiments1.00055100%
2Bitler, Gelbach, and Hoynes (2017) Can Variation in Subgroups' Average Treatment Effects Explain Treatment Effect Heterogeneity? Evidence from a Social Experiment1.00054100%
3Kline and Tartari (2016) Bounding the Labor Supply Responses to a Randomized Welfare Experiment: A Revealed Preference Approach1.00053100%
4Athey, Tibshirani, and Wager (2018) Generalized Random Forests0.73732100%
5Athey and Imbens (2016) Recursive Partitioning for Heterogeneous Causal Effects0.64422100%
6Chernozhukov, Chetverikov, Demirer, Duflo, Hansen, Newey, and Robins (2018) Double/Debiased Machine Learning for Treatment and Structural Parameters0.64422100%
7Hastie, Tibshirani, and Friedman (2009) Elemants of Statistical Learning: Data Mining, Inference, and Prediction0.64422100%
8Athey and Wager (2018) Efficient Policy Learning0.40511100%
9Lee, Okui, and Whang (2017) Doubly Robust Uniform Confidence Band for the Conditional Average Treatment Effect Function0.40511100%
10Wager and Athey (2018) Estimation and Inference of Heterogeneous Treatment Effects Using Random Forests0.40511100%

Showing the top 10 of 36 scored citations.

Cited by, within the corpus

arXiv econ.EM papers that cite this one, ranked by how heavily they lean on it.

Citing paperIntensityMentionsSections
1Double Machine Learning for Static Panel Models with Fixed Effects0.40511
2xtdml: Double Machine Learning Estimation to Static Panel Data Models with Fixed Effects in R0.40511
3Double Machine Learning for Static Panel Data with Instrumental Variables: New Method and Applications0.40511