Social Experiments and Instrumental Variables with Duration Outcomes

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Empirical Micro Seminar
University of Pennsylvania

3718 Locust Walk
309 McNeil

Philadelphia, PA

United States

This paper examines the empirical analysis of treatment effects on duration outcomes from data that contain instrumental variation.We focus on social experiments in which an intention to treat is randomized and compliance

may be imperfect.We distinguish between cases where the treatment starts at the moment of randomization and cases where it starts at a later point in time. We derive exclusion restrictions under various informational and

behavioral assumptions and we analyze identifiability under these restrictions. It turns out that randomization (and by implication,in strumental variation) by itself is often insuffcient for inference on interesting effects, and needs to be augmented by a semiparametric structure. We develop corresponding non- or semiparametric tests and estimation methods.

For more information, contact Jere Behrman.

Gerard van der Berg

University of Amsterdam

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