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Treatment effects at the margin: Everyone is marginal

Haotian Deng

arXiv 29 Aug 2025 · Econometrics

arXiv:2508.21583 · PDF · DOI · OpenAlex · Extracted main text

Abstract

This paper develops a framework for identifying treatment effects when a policy simultaneously alters both the incentive to participate and the outcome of interest -- such as hiring decisions and wages in response to employment subsidies; or working decisions and wages in response to job trainings. This framework was inspired by my PhD project on a Belgian reform that subsidised first-time hiring, inducing entry by marginal firms yet meanwhile changing the wages they pay. Standard methods addressing selection-into-treatment concepts (like Heckman selection equations and local average treatment effects), or before-after comparisons (including simple DiD or RDD), cannot isolate effects at this shifting margin where treatment defines who is observed. I introduce marginality-weighted estimands that recover causal effects among policy-induced entrants, offering a policy-relevant alternative in settings with endogenous selection. This method can thus be applied widely to understanding the economic impacts of public programmes, especially in fields largely relying on reduced-form causal inference estimation (e.g. labour economics, development economics, health economics).

Citation extraction

13
references
15
in-text mentions
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distinct cited
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self-citations
4,385
main-text words

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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
1Rosenbaum, P. R. and D. B. Rubin (1983) The central role of the propensity score in observational studies for causal effects0.64422100%
2Heckman, J. J. and E. J. Vytlacil (2005) Structural equations, treatment effects, and econometric policy evaluation0.5112250%
3Abadie, A. and G. W. Imbens (2006) Large sample properties of matching estimators for average treatment effects0.40511100%
4Branstetter, L., F. Lima, L. J. Taylor, and A. Venâncio (2014) Do entry regulations deter entrepreneurship and job creation? Evidence from recent reforms in Portugal0.40511100%
5Deng, H. and G. Bijnens (2025) A theory of new employer entry: Entrepreneurial decision under uncertainty self0.40511100%
6Heckman, J. J., H. Ichimura, and P. E. Todd (1997, 10) (1997) Matching as an econometric evaluation estimator: Evidence from evaluating a job training programme0.40511100%
7Hirano, K., G. W. Imbens, and G. Ridder (2003) Efficient estimation of average treatment effects using the estimated propensity score0.40511100%
8Hombert, J., A. Schoar, D. Sraer, and D. Thesmar (2020) Can unemployment insurance spur entrepreneurial activity? Evidence from France0.40511100%
9Imbens, G. W. and J. D. Angrist (1994) Identification and estimation of local average treatment effects0.40511100%
10Imbens, G. W (2004) Nonparametric estimation of average treatment effects under exogeneity: A review0.40511100%

Showing the top 10 of 13 scored citations.