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Robust Inference for Weighted Estimands

Vod Vilfort

arXiv 8 Jul 2026 · Econometrics

arXiv:2607.07524 · PDF · DOI · OpenAlex · Extracted main text

Abstract

Researchers often conduct inference on weighted estimands, defined as weighted averages of group-level effects. Example settings include event studies with cohort-level effects and experiments with site-level effects. Under heterogeneous effects, different weighting schemes yield estimands with distinct empirical and policy interpretations, leading to ambiguity and disagreement over the choice of weights. I establish bounds on differences between weighted estimands and confidence bounds on effect heterogeneity, which I use to construct estimators that minimize worst-case bias and confidence intervals that are uniformly valid over classes of weighted estimands. I apply these methods to an event study in Lakdawala, Nakasone, and Kho (2023), which studies the effects of school-based internet access on test scores. I find that results are robust to broad classes of weights. I then apply the methods to Tennessee's Project STAR experiment and find that results are sensitive to small departures from baseline weights.

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79
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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
1Sun, Liyang and Abraham, Sarah (2021) Estimating dynamic treatment effects in event studies with heterogeneous treatment effects1.000155100%
2Callaway, Brantly and Sant’Anna, Pedro HC (2021) Difference-in-differences with multiple time periods1.000114100%
3Goldsmith-Pinkham, Paul and Hull, Peter and Kolesár, Michal (2024) Contamination bias in linear regressions1.00063100%
4Lakdawala, Leah K and Nakasone, Eduardo and Kho, Kevin (2023) Dynamic impacts of school-based internet access on student learning: Evidence from Peruvian public primary schools1.00054100%
5Allcott, Hunt (2015) Site selection bias in program evaluation1.00053100%
6Roth, Jonathan and Sant’Anna, Pedro HC and Bilinski, Alyssa and Poe,… (2023) What’s trending in difference-in-differences? A synthesis of the recent econometrics literature1.00053100%
7Schanzenbach, Diane Whitmore (2006) What have researchers learned from Project STAR?0.87462100%
8Wing, Coady and Freedman, Seth M and Hollingsworth, Alex (2024) Stacked difference-in-differences0.84333100%
9De Chaisemartin, Clément and d’Haultfoeuille, Xavier (2020) Two-way fixed effects estimators with heterogeneous treatment effects0.81142100%
10Goodman-Bacon, Andrew (2021) Difference-in-differences with variation in treatment timing0.81142100%

Showing the top 10 of 79 scored citations.