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Assessing Outcome-to-Outcome Interference in Sibling Fixed Effects Models

David C. Mallinson

arXiv 27 Sep 2021 · Statistics — Methodology

arXiv:2109.13399 · PDF · DOI · OpenAlex · Extracted main text

Abstract

Sibling fixed effects (FE) models are useful for estimating causal treatment effects while offsetting unobserved sibling-invariant confounding. However, treatment estimates are biased if an individual's outcome affects their sibling's outcome. We propose a robustness test for assessing the presence of outcome-to-outcome interference in linear two-sibling FE models. We regress a gain-score--the difference between siblings' continuous outcomes--on both siblings' treatments and on a pre-treatment observed FE. Under certain restrictions, the observed FE's partial regression coefficient signals the presence of outcome-to-outcome interference. Monte Carlo simulations demonstrated the robustness test under several models. We found that an observed FE signaled outcome-to-outcome spillover if it was directly associated with an sibling-invariant confounder of treatments and outcomes, directly associated with a sibling's treatment, or directly and equally associated with both siblings' outcomes. However, the robustness test collapsed if the observed FE was directly but differentially associated with siblings' outcomes or if outcomes affected siblings' treatments.

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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
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Showing the top 10 of 29 scored citations.