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Sensitivity of LATE Estimates to Violations of the Monotonicity Assumption

Claudia Noack

arXiv 11 Jun 2021 · Econometrics · 2 citations (OpenAlex)

arXiv:2106.06421 · PDF · DOI · OpenAlex · Extracted main text

Abstract

In this paper, we develop a method to assess the sensitivity of local average treatment effect estimates to potential violations of the monotonicity assumption of Imbens and Angrist (1994). We parameterize the degree to which monotonicity is violated using two sensitivity parameters: the first one determines the share of defiers in the population, and the second one measures differences in the distributions of outcomes between compliers and defiers. For each pair of values of these sensitivity parameters, we derive sharp bounds on the outcome distributions of compliers in the first-order stochastic dominance sense. We identify the robust region that is the set of all values of sensitivity parameters for which a given empirical conclusion, e.g. that the local average treatment effect is positive, is valid. Researchers can assess the credibility of their conclusion by evaluating whether all the plausible sensitivity parameters lie in the robust region. We obtain confidence sets for the robust region through a bootstrap procedure and illustrate the sensitivity analysis in an empirical application. We also extend this framework to analyze treatment effects of the entire population.

Citation extraction

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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
1Angrist, J. and W. Evans (1998) Children and Their Parents' Labor Supply: Evidence from Exogenous Variation in Family Size1.00063100%
2Masten, M. A. and A. Poirier (2020) Inference on Breakdown Frontiers0.87412467%
3Stoye, J (2010) Partial identification of spread parameters0.8435560%
4Kline, P. and A. Santos (2013) Sensitivity to missing data assumptions: Theory and an evaluation of the U.S0.84333100%
5Fang, Z. and A. Santos (2018) Inference on directionally differentiable functions0.7946350%
6Angrist, J. D., G. W. Imbens, and D. B. Rubin (1996) Identification of Causal Effects Using Instrumental Variables0.73732100%
7De Chaisemartin, C (2017) Tolerating defiance? Local average treatment effects without monotonicity0.73732100%
8Kitagawa, T (2021) The identification region of the potential outcome distributions under instrument independence0.73732100%
9Hong, H. and J. Li (2018) "The numerical delta method"0.64422100%
10Chernozhukov, V., I. Férnandez‐-Val, and A. Galichon (2010) Quantile and Probability Curves Without Crossing0.64422100%

Showing the top 10 of 55 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
1Pairwise Valid Instruments0.94164
2Sensitivity Analysis for Instrumental Variables Under Joint Relaxations of Monotonicity and Independence0.92843
3Robust Identification in Randomized Experiments with Noncompliance0.73732
4On the falsification of instrumental variable models for heterogeneous treatment effects0.51122
5Policy Relevant Treatment Effects with Multidimensional Unobserved Heterogeneity0.40511
6Inference for Treatment Effects Conditional on Generalized Principal Strata using Instrumental Variables0.40511
7Toggling the Defiers to Relax Monotonicity: The Difference-in-Instrumental-Variables Estimand0.40511