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Policy Targeting with Market Equilibrium

Gyungbae Park

arXiv 16 Sep 2026 · Econometrics

arXiv:2609.18600 · PDF · Extracted main text

Abstract

This paper develops a framework for individualized treatment allocation when interventions shift equilibrium prices and generate spillovers across treated and untreated units. The planner chooses which units receive a subsidy while allowing equilibrium prices to adjust endogenously. We show that the resulting welfare function is supermodular under broad and interpretable conditions, implying complementarity across treatment assignments and enabling exact polynomial-time optimization. This structure clarifies how equilibrium spillovers shape the trade-off between universal and targeted distribution and makes the planner's problem computationally tractable despite interactions across units. We characterize when universal or targeted subsidies are optimal and show how market conditions and heterogeneity shape the optimal allocation. We further establish statistical guarantees for plug-in allocation under estimation uncertainty in demand and supply. Finally, we illustrate the framework in a coupon allocation problem calibrated with household expenditure data from the Philippines.

Citation extraction

37
references
48
in-text mentions
37
distinct cited
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self-citations
8,147
main-text words

appendix boundary found by appendix_command · 52% of the source is main text. Read the extracted text to check this.

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
1Evan Munro and Xu Kuang and Stefan Wager (2025) Treatment Effects in Market Equilibrium1.00053100%
2Deon Filmer and Jed Friedman and Eeshani Kandpal and Junko Onishi (2023) Cash Transfers, Food Prices, and Nutrition Impacts on Ineligible Children0.81142100%
3Peter M. Aronow and Cyrus Samii (2017) Estimating Average Causal Effects under General Interference, with Application to a Social Network Experiment0.64422100%
4Satoru Iwata and Lisa Fleischer and Satoru Fujishige (2001) A Combinatorial Strongly Polynomial Algorithm for Minimizing Submodular Functions0.64422100%
5James B. Orlin (2009) A Faster Strongly Polynomial Time Algorithm for Submodular Function Minimization0.64422100%
6Alexander Schrijver (2000) A Combinatorial Algorithm Minimizing Submodular Functions in Strongly Polynomial Time0.64422100%
7Ananth (2021) Optimal Treatment Assignment Rules on Networked Populations0.40511100%
8Athey, Susan and Wager, Stefan (2021) Policy Learning With Observational Data0.40511100%
9Debopam Bhattacharya and Pascaline Dupas and Shin Kanaya (2024) Demand and Welfare Analysis in Discrete Choice Models with Social Interactions0.40511100%
10Ying Chen and Mingyi Li and Jiaming Mao and Jingyi Zhou (2026) Consumption stimulus with digital coupons: Heterogeneity and policy design0.40511100%

Showing the top 10 of 37 scored citations.