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Abadie's Kappa and Weighting Estimators of the Local Average Treatment Effect

Tymon Słoczyński, S. Derya Uysal, Jeffrey M. Wooldridge

arXiv 15 Apr 2022 · Econometrics · publishedJournal of Business and Economic Statistics (2024) · 4 citations (OpenAlex)

arXiv:2204.07672 · PDF · DOI · OpenAlex · Extracted main text

Abstract

Recent research has demonstrated the importance of flexibly controlling for covariates in instrumental variables estimation. In this paper we study the finite sample and asymptotic properties of various weighting estimators of the local average treatment effect (LATE), motivated by Abadie's (2003) kappa theorem and offering the requisite flexibility relative to standard practice. We argue that two of the estimators under consideration, which are weight normalized, are generally preferable. Several other estimators, which are unnormalized, do not satisfy the properties of scale invariance with respect to the natural logarithm and translation invariance, thereby exhibiting sensitivity to the units of measurement when estimating the LATE in logs and the centering of the outcome variable more generally. We also demonstrate that, when noncompliance is one sided, certain weighting estimators have the advantage of being based on a denominator that is strictly greater than zero by construction. This is the case for only one of the two normalized estimators, and we recommend this estimator for wider use. We illustrate our findings with a simulation study and three empirical applications, which clearly document the sensitivity of unnormalized estimators to how the outcome variable is coded. We implement the proposed estimators in the Stata package kappalate.

Citation extraction

69
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distinct cited
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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
1Frölich (2007) Nonparametric IV Estimation of Local Average Treatment Effects with Covariates1.000113100%
2Angrist and Evans (1998) Children and Their Parents' Labor Supply: Evidence from Exogenous Variation in Family Size1.000103100%
3Tan (2006) Regression and Weighting Methods for Causal Inference Using Instrumental Variables1.00093100%
4Uysal (2011) Three Essays on Doubly Robust Estimation Methods self1.00073100%
5Heiler (2022) Efficient Covariate Balancing for the Local Average Treatment Effect0.98118494%
6Sant'Anna, Song and Xu (2022) Covariate Distribution Balance via Propensity Scores0.92843100%
7Abadie (2003) Semiparametric Instrumental Variable Estimation of Treatment Response Models0.89428471%
8Card (1995) Using Geographic Variation in College Proximity to Estimate the Return to Schooling0.874182100%
9Angrist (1990) Lifetime Earnings and the Vietnam Era Draft Lottery: Evidence from Social Security Administrative Records0.87482100%
10Imai and Ratkovic (2014) Covariate Balancing Propensity Score0.87462100%

Showing the top 10 of 69 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
1A Practical Guide to Instrumental Variables Methods with Heterogeneous Treatment Effects0.87452
2Doubly Robust Estimators with Weak Overlap0.64422
3When Should We (Not) Interpret Linear IV Estimands as LATE?0.40511
4Covariate Balancing and the Equivalence of Weighting and Doubly Robust Estimators of Average Treatment Effects0.40511
52402.116520.40511