arXiv 19 Mar 2019 · General Economics · publishedStatistics and Public Policy (2024) · 3 citations (OpenAlex)
arXiv:1903.08028 · PDF · DOI · OpenAlex · Extracted main text
This paper examines how homestead policies, which opened vast frontier lands for settlement, influenced the development of American frontier states. It uses a treatment propensity-weighted matrix completion model to estimate the counterfactual size of these states without homesteading. In simulation studies, the method shows lower bias and variance than other estimators, particularly in higher complexity scenarios. The empirical analysis reveals that homestead policies significantly and persistently reduced state government expenditure and revenue. These findings align with continuous difference-in-differences estimates using 1.46 million land patent records. This study's extension of the matrix completion method to include propensity score weighting for causal effect estimation in panel data, especially in staggered treatment contexts, enhances policy evaluation by improving the precision of long-term policy impact assessments.
appendix boundary found by appendix_titled_section at “Supplemental online material” · 99% of the source is main text. Read the extracted text to check this.
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.
| Reference | Intensity | Mentions | Sections | Main text | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Engerman, S. L. and Sokoloff, K. L (2005) The Evolution of Suffrage Institutions in the New World | 0.843 | 3 | 3 | 100% |
| 2 | Athey, S. and Imbens, G. W (2021) Design-based analysis in difference-in-differences settings with staggered adoption | 0.737 | 3 | 2 | 100% |
| 3 | Athey, S., Bayati, M., Doudchenko, N., Imbens, G., and Khosravi, K (2021) Matrix completion methods for causal panel data models | 0.737 | 3 | 2 | 100% |
| 4 | Murtazashvili, I (2013) The Political Economy of the American Frontier | 0.737 | 3 | 2 | 100% |
| 5 | Ben-Michael, E., Feller, A., and Rothstein, J (2019) Synthetic Controls with Staggered Adoption | 0.644 | 2 | 2 | 100% |
| 6 | Bustos, N. A. L (2017) Essays on the effects of the Homestead Act on Land Inequality and Human Capital, the effects of Land Redistribution on Crop Choi… | 0.644 | 2 | 2 | 100% |
| 7 | Xu, Y (2017) Generalized Synthetic Control Method: Causal Inference with Interactive Fixed Effects Models | 0.644 | 2 | 2 | 100% |
| 8 | Haines, M. R (2010) Historical, Demographic, Economic, and Social Data: The United States, 1790-2002, Ann Arbor, MI: Inter-university Consortium for… | 0.585 | 3 | 1 | 100% |
| 9 | Benabou, R (2000) Unequal Societies: Income Distribution and the Social Contract | 0.511 | 2 | 1 | 100% |
| 10 | Besley, T. and Persson, T (2009) The Origins of State Capacity: Property Rights, Taxation and Politics | 0.511 | 2 | 1 | 100% |
Showing the top 10 of 73 scored citations.