Working Papers

We develop new semiparametric methods for estimating treatment effects. We focus on a setting where the outcome distributions may be thick tailed, where treatment effects are small, where sample sizes are large and where assignment is completely…

Interest rate caps are widespread in consumer credit markets, yet there is limited evidence on their effects on market outcomes and welfare. The effects of this policy are ambiguous and depend on a trade-off between consumer protection…

Long-acting reversible contraceptives are highly effective in preventing unintended pregnancies, but take-up remains low. This paper analyzes a randomized controlled trial of interventions addressing two barriers to long-acting reversible…

Empirical models play a distinctive role in the study of matching markets. They provide a quantitative framework for measuring heterogeneity in preferences for schools (Hastings et al., 2009), comparing school assignment mechanisms (…

Analyzing observational data from multiple sources can be useful for increasing statistical power to detect a treatment effect; however, practical constraints such as privacy considerations may restrict individual-level information sharing across…

Banks’ reluctance to repair their balance sheets, combined with deposit insurance and regulatory forbearance in recognizing greater risks and losses, can lead to solvency problems that look like liquidity (bank-run) crises. Regulatory forbearance…

New technologies have enabled firms to elicit granular behavioral data from consumers in exchange for lower prices and better experiences. This data can mitigate asymmetric information and moral hazard, but it may also increase firms’ market…

Overlap in baseline covariates between treated and control groups, also known as positivity or common support, is a common assumption in observational causal inference. Assessing this assumption is often ad hoc, however, and can give misleading…

We propose a new estimator for the average causal effects of a binary treatment with panel data in settings with general treatment patterns. Our approach augments the twoway-fixed-effects specification with the unit-specific weights that arise…

We study a prominent energy regulation affecting large Chinese manufacturers that are part of broader conglomerates. Using detailed firm-level data and difference-in-differences research designs, we show that regulated firms cut output and…

We study the problem of model selection for contextual bandits, in which the algorithm must balance the bias-variance trade-off for model estimation while also balancing the exploration-exploitation trade-off. In this paper, we propose the first…

We propose a new diffusion-asymptotic analysis for sequentially randomized experiments, including those that arise in solving multi-armed bandit problems. In an experiment with n time steps, we let the mean reward gaps between actions…

It has become increasingly common for data to be collected adaptively, for example using contextual bandits. Historical data of this type can be used to evaluate other treatment assignment policies to guide future innovation or experiments.…

COVID-19 drove a mass social experiment in working from home. We survey more than 30,000 Americans over multiple waves to investigate whether WFH will stick, and why. Our data say that 20 percent of full workdays will be supplied from home after…

Individuals face non-linear budget constraints in myriad situations. We test a fundamental assumption of economic analysis in such settings: that individuals display stable preferences when facing linear and non-linear incentives. We use a…

The article offers information about the platform annexation, and the logic using basic principles from platform economics. It analyzes the platform annexation to the traditional antitrust categories in the market. It mentions that a platform…

Computationally efficient contextual bandits are often based on estimating a predictive model of rewards given contexts and arms using past data. However, when the reward model is not well-specified, the bandit algorithm may incur unexpected…

In medicine, randomized clinical trials are the gold standard for informing treatment decisions. Observational comparative effectiveness research is often plagued by selection bias, and expert-selected covariates may not be sufficient to adjust…

Vaccinating the world’s population quickly in a pandemic has enormous health and economic benefits. We analyze the problem faced by governments in determining the scale and structure of procurement for vaccines. We analyze alternative approaches…

We study how fathers’ access to workplace flexibility affects maternal postpartum health. We use variation from a Swedish reform that granted new fathers more flexibility to take intermittent parental leave during the postpartum period and…