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Identifying Causal Effects in Experiments with Spillovers and Non-compliance

Francis J. DiTraglia, Camilo Garcia-Jimeno, Rossa O'Keeffe-O'Donovan, Alejandro Sanchez-Becerra

arXiv 13 Nov 2020 · Econometrics · publishedJournal of Econometrics (2023) · 4 citations (OpenAlex)

arXiv:2011.07051 · PDF · DOI · OpenAlex · Extracted main text

Abstract

This paper shows how to use a randomized saturation experimental design to identify and estimate causal effects in the presence of spillovers--one person's treatment may affect another's outcome--and one-sided non-compliance--subjects can only be offered treatment, not compelled to take it up. Two distinct causal effects are of interest in this setting: direct effects quantify how a person's own treatment changes her outcome, while indirect effects quantify how her peers' treatments change her outcome. We consider the case in which spillovers occur within known groups, and take-up decisions are invariant to peers' realized offers. In this setting we point identify the effects of treatment-on-the-treated, both direct and indirect, in a flexible random coefficients model that allows for heterogeneous treatment effects and endogenous selection into treatment. We go on to propose a feasible estimator that is consistent and asymptotically normal as the number and size of groups increases. We apply our estimator to data from a large-scale job placement services experiment, and find negative indirect treatment effects on the likelihood of employment for those willing to take up the program. These negative spillovers are offset by positive direct treatment effects from own take-up.

Citation extraction

39
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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
1Crépon, B., Duflo, E., Gurgand, M., Rathelot, R., Zamora, P (2013) Do labor market policies have displacement effects? Evidence from a clustered randomized experiment0.96721890%
2Imai, K., Jiang, Z., Malani, A (2020) Causal inference with interference and noncompliance in two-stage randomized experiments0.87462100%
3Kang, H., Imbens, G (2016) Peer Encouragement Designs in Causal Inference with Partial Interference and Identification of Local Average Network Effects0.81142100%
4Manski, C.F (2013) Identification of treatment response with social interactions0.64422100%
5Hudgens, M.G., Halloran, M.E (2008) Toward causal inference with interference0.64422100%
6Masten, M.A., Torgovitsky, A (2016) Identification of instrumental variable correlated random coefficients models0.64422100%
7Vazquez-Bare, G (2021) Causal spillover effects using instrumental variables0.58531100%
8Baird, S., Bohren, J.A., McIntosh, C., Özler, B (2018) Optimal design of experiments in the presence of interference0.51121100%
9Miguel, E., Kremer, M (2004) Worms: identifying impacts on education and health in the presence of treatment externalities0.51121100%
10Akram, A.A., Chowdhury, S., Mobarak, A.M (2018) Effects of emigration on rural labor markets0.40511100%

Showing the top 10 of 39 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
1Bounds for within-household encouragement designs with interference0.92843
2Unobserved Heterogeneous Spillover Effects in Instrumental Variable Models0.92843
3Policy-relevant causal effect estimation using instrumental variables with interference0.73732
4Causal Spillover Effects Using Instrumental Variables0.64422
5Causal Inference with Noncompliance and Unknown Interference0.40511
6Estimating a Continuous Treatment Model with Spillovers: A Control Function Approach0.40511
7Network Synthetic Interventions: A Causal Framework for Panel Data Under Network Interference0.40511
8Graph Neural Networks for Causal Inference Under Network Confounding0.40511
9Causal Interpretation of Linear Social Interaction Models with Endogenous Networks0.40511