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Estimating Treatment Effects Under Bounded Heterogeneity

Soonwoo Kwon, Liyang Sun

arXiv 6 Oct 2025 · Econometrics · 1 citations (OpenAlex)

arXiv:2510.05454 · PDF · DOI · OpenAlex · Extracted main text

Abstract

Researchers often use specifications that correctly estimate the average treatment effect under the assumption of constant effects. When treatment effects are heterogeneous, however, such specifications generally fail to recover this average effect. Augmenting these specifications with interaction terms between demeaned covariates and treatment eliminates this bias, but often leads to imprecise estimates and becomes infeasible under limited overlap. We propose a generalized ridge regression estimator, $regulaTE$, that penalizes the coefficients on the interaction terms to achieve an optimal trade-off between worst-case bias and variance in estimating the average effect under limited treatment effect heterogeneity. Building on this estimator, we construct confidence intervals that remain valid under limited overlap and can also be used to assess sensitivity to violations of the constant effects assumption. We illustrate the method in empirical applications under unconfoundedness and staggered adoption, providing a practical approach to inference under limited overlap.

Citation extraction

45
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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. D (1998) Estimating the labor market impact of voluntary military service using social security data on military applicants1.000113100%
2Armstrong, T. B. and M. Kolesár (2018) Optimal inference in a class of regression models0.8434375%
3Angrist, J. D. and J.-S. Pischke (2009) Mostly harmless econometrics: An empiricist's companion0.81142100%
4Armstrong, T. B., M. Kolesár, and S. Kwon (2023) Bias-aware inference in regularized regression models0.7547343%
5Armstrong, T. B., P. Kline, and L. Sun (2025) Adapting to misspecification0.7375340%
6Armstrong, T. B. and M. Kolesár (2021) Finite-sample optimal estimation and inference on average treatment effects under unconfoundedness0.73732100%
7de Chaisemartin, C. and X. D'Haultfuille (2020) Two-way fixed effects estimators with heterogeneous treatment effects0.73732100%
8Goodman-Bacon, A (2021) Difference-in-differences with variation in treatment timing0.73732100%
9Sanchez-Becerra, A (2023) Robust inference for the treatment effect variance in experiments using machine learning0.73732100%
10Aizer, A., S. Eli, J. Ferrie, and A. Lleras-Muney (2016) The long-run impact of cash transfers to poor families0.69351100%

Showing the top 10 of 45 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
1Robust Inference for Weighted Estimands0.51121
2Learning What to Learn: Experimental Design when Combining Experimental with Observational Evidence0.40511