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Empirical Welfare Maximization with Constraints

Liyang Sun

arXiv 29 Mar 2021 · Econometrics · 4 citations (OpenAlex)

arXiv:2103.15298 · PDF · DOI · OpenAlex · Extracted main text

Abstract

Empirical Welfare Maximization (EWM) is a framework that can be used to select welfare program eligibility policies based on data. This paper extends EWM by allowing for uncertainty in estimating the budget needed to implement the selected policy, in addition to its welfare. Due to the additional estimation error, I show there exist no rules that achieve the highest welfare possible while satisfying a budget constraint uniformly over a wide range of DGPs. This differs from the setting without a budget constraint where uniformity is achievable. I propose an alternative trade-off rule and illustrate it with Medicaid expansion, a setting with imperfect take-up and varying program costs.

Citation extraction

34
references
67
in-text mentions
34
distinct cited
1
self-citations
13,515
main-text words

appendix boundary found by appendix_command · 56% of the source is main text. Read the extracted text to check this.

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
1Kitagawa and Tetenov (2018) Who Should Be Treated? Empirical Welfare Maximization Methods for Treatment Choice0.90912575%
2Athey and Wager (2021) Policy Learning With Observational Data0.8434375%
3Hendren and Sprung-Keyser (2020) A Unified Welfare Analysis of Government Policies0.81142100%
4Finkelstein, Taubman, Wright, Bernstein, Gruber, Newhouse, Allen and… (2012) The Oregon Health Insurance Experiment: Evidence from the First Year0.69361100%
5Hirano and Porter (2009) Asymptotics for Statistical Treatment Rules0.64422100%
6Bhattacharya and Dupas (2012) Inferring welfare maximizing treatment assignment under budget constraints0.58531100%
7Stoye (2009) Minimax regret treatment choice with finite samples0.58531100%
8Rai (2019) Statistical Inference for Treatment Assignment Policies0.5112250%
9Finkelstein, Hendren and Luttmer (2019) The Value of Medicaid: Interpreting Results from the Oregon Health Insurance Experiment0.51121100%
10Manski (2004) Statistical Treatment Rules for Heterogeneous Populations0.51121100%

Showing the top 10 of 34 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
1PAC-Bayesian Treatment Allocation Under Budget Constraints1.00063
2Policy Learning under Endogeneity Using Instrumental Variables0.81142
3Regularizing Fairness in Optimal Policy Learning with Distributional Targets0.51122
4Policy Learning with Confidence$^$0.51121
5Fair Policy Targeting0.40511
6Orthogonal Policy Learning Under Ambiguity0.40511
7Safe Policy Learning under Regression Discontinuity Designs with Multiple Cutoffs0.40511
8Stochastic treatment choice with empirical welfare updating0.40511
9Contextual Bandits in a Survey Experiment on Charitable Giving: Within-Experiment Outcomes versus Policy Learning0.40511
10Stable Probability Weighting Large-Sample and Finite-Sample Estimation and Inference Methods for Heterogeneous Causal Effects of Multivalued Treatments Under Limited Overlap0.40511