arXiv 26 Mar 2026 · Econometrics
arXiv:2603.25529 · PDF · DOI · OpenAlex · Extracted main text
In this paper I develop a breakdown frontier approach to assess the sensitivity of Local Average Treatment Effects (LATE) estimates to violations of monotonicity and independence of the instrument. I parametrize violations of independence using the concept of $c$-dependence from Masten & Poirier (2018) and allow for the share of defiers to be greater than zero but smaller than the share of compliers. I derive identified sets for the LATE and the Average Treatment Effect (ATE) in which the bounds are functions of these two sensitivity parameters. Using these bounds, I derive the breakdown frontier for the LATE, which is the weakest set of assumptions such that a conclusion regarding the LATE holds. I derive consistent sample analogue estimators for the breakdown frontiers and provide a valid bootstrap procedure for inference. Monte Carlo simulations show the desirable finite-sample properties of the estimators and an empirical application shows that the conclusions regarding the effect of family size on unemployment from Angrist & Evans (1998) are highly sensitive to violations of independence and monotonicity.
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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 | Joshua D. Angrist and William N. Evans (1998) Children and Their Parents' Labor Supply: Evidence from Exogenous Variation in Family Size | 1.000 | 6 | 4 | 100% |
| 2 | Masten, Matthew A. and Poirier, Alexandre (2020) Inference on breakdown frontiers | 0.950 | 7 | 4 | 86% |
| 3 | Masten, Matthew A. and Poirier, Alexandre (2018) Identification of Treatment Effects Under Conditional Partial Independence | 0.941 | 6 | 6 | 83% |
| 4 | Alexander Balke and Judea Pearl (1997) Bounds on Treatment Effects from Studies with Imperfect Compliance | 0.928 | 5 | 4 | 80% |
| 5 | Chen, Xuan and Flores, Carlos A. and Flores-Lagunes, Alfonso (2017) Going beyond LATE: Bounding Average Treatment Effects of Job Corps Training | 0.928 | 5 | 3 | 80% |
| 6 | Noack, Claudia (2026) Sensitivity of LATE Estimates to Violations of the Monotonicity Assumption | 0.928 | 4 | 3 | 100% |
| 7 | de Chaisemartin, Clément (2017) Tolerating defiance? Local average treatment effects without monotonicity | 0.843 | 3 | 3 | 100% |
| 8 | Fang, Zheng and Santos, Andres (2018) Inference on Directionally Differentiable Functions | 0.794 | 10 | 3 | 50% |
| 9 | Huber, Martin and Laffers, Lukas and Mellace, Giovanni (2017) Sharp IV Bounds on Average Treatment Effects on the Treated and Other Populations Under Endogeneity and Noncompliance | 0.737 | 3 | 3 | 67% |
| 10 | Han Hong and Jessie Li (2018) The numerical delta method | 0.644 | 2 | 2 | 100% |
Showing the top 10 of 26 scored citations.