José Luis Montiel Olea, Brenda Prallon, Chen Qiu, Jörg Stoye, Yiwei Sun
arXiv 17 Aug 2024 · Econometrics
arXiv:2408.09187 · PDF · DOI · OpenAlex · Extracted main text
We present a decision-theoretic justification for viewing the question of how to best choose where to experiment in order to optimize external validity as a $k$-median problem, a popular problem in computer science and operations research. We present conditions under which minimizing the worst-case, welfare-based regret among all nonrandom schemes that select $k$ sites to experiment is approximately equal - and sometimes exactly equal - to finding the k most central vectors of baseline site-level covariates. The k-median problem can be formulated as a linear integer program. Two empirical applications illustrate the theoretical and computational benefits of the suggested procedure.
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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.
| Reference | Intensity | Mentions | Sections | Main text | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Gechter, M., K. Hirano, J. Lee, M. Mahmud, O. Mondal, J. Morduch, S.… (2024) Selecting Experimental Sites for External Validity | 1.000 | 24 | 4 | 100% |
| 2 | Egami, N. and D. D. I. Lee (2024) Designing Multi-Context Studies for External Validity: Site Selection via Synthetic Purposive Sampling | 1.000 | 22 | 3 | 100% |
| 3 | Ishihara, T. and T. Kitagawa (2021) Evidence Aggregation for Treatment Choice, ArXiv:2108.06473 [econ.EM], https://doi.org/10.48550/arXiv.2108.06473 | 1.000 | 6 | 3 | 100% |
| 4 | Williamson, D. P. and D. B. Shmoys (2011) The design of approximation algorithms | 1.000 | 5 | 3 | 100% |
| 5 | Yata, K (2021) Optimal Decision Rules Under Partial Identification, ArXiv:2111.04926 [econ.EM], https://doi.org/10.48550/arXiv.2111.04926 | 0.941 | 6 | 5 | 83% |
| 6 | Montiel Olea, J. L., C. Qiu, and J. Stoye (2025) Decision Theory for Treatment Choice Problems with Partial Identification | 0.899 | 11 | 5 | 73% |
| 7 | Stoye, J (2012) Minimax regret treatment choice with covariates or with limited validity of experiments self | 0.843 | 4 | 4 | 75% |
| 8 | Lee, J. N., J. Morduch, S. Ravindran, A. Shonchoy, and H. Zaman (2021) Poverty and migration in the digital age: Experimental evidence on mobile banking in Bangladesh | 0.693 | 11 | 1 | 100% |
| 9 | Naumann, E., L. F. Stoetzer, and G. Pietrantuono (2018) Attitudes towards highly skilled and low-skilled immigration in Europe: A survey experiment in 15 European countries | 0.644 | 3 | 2 | 67% |
| 10 | Abadie, A., A. Diamond, and J. Hainmueller (2010) Synthetic control methods for comparative case studies: Estimating the effect of California’s tobacco control program | 0.644 | 2 | 2 | 100% |
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