Joshua D Angrist
Dados Biográficos
| ID | 979741 |
|---|---|
| NOME | Joshua D Angrist |
| PRENOMES | Joshua D |
| SOBRENOME | Angrist |
| ASSINATURA | ANGRIST J D |
| AFILIAÇÕES | National Bureau of Economic Research |
| ORCID | 0000-0001-6992-8956 |
| VERIFICADO | Não |
| TOTAL DE OBRAS | 43 |
| TOTAL DE CITAÇÕES | 668 |
| TOTAL COMO AUTOR | 43 |
| TOTAL COMO EDITOR | 0 |
| PRIMEIRO ANO DE PUBLICAÇÃO | 1991 |
| ANO MAIS RECENTE DE PUBLICAÇÃO | 2024 |
| ÍNDICE H | 9 |
One instrument to rule them all
Credible School Value-Added with Undersubscribed School Lotteries
We introduce two empirical strategies harnessing the randomness in school assignment mechanisms to measure school value-added. The first estimator controls for the probability of school assignment, treating take-up as ignorable. We test this assumption using randomness in assignments. The second approach uses assignments as instrumental variables (IVs) for low-dimensional models of value-added and forms empirical Bayes posteriors from these IV es…
Machine Labor
The utility of machine learning (ML) for regression-based causal inference is illustrated by using lasso to select control variables for estimates of college characteristics’ wage effects. Post-double-selection lasso offers a path to data-driven sensitivity analysis. ML also seems useful for an instrumental variables (IV) first stage, since two-stage least squares (2SLS) bias reflects overfitting. While ML-based instrument selection can improve o…
Semiparametric Estimates of Monetary Policy Effects
We develop flexible semiparametric time series methods for the estimation of the causal effect of monetary policy on macroeconomic aggregates. Our estimator captures the average causal response to discrete policy interventions in a macrodynamic setting, without the need for assumptions about the process generating macroeconomic outcomes. The proposed estimation strategy, based on propensity score weighting, easily accommodates asymmetric and nonl…
Undergraduate Econometrics Instruction
The past half-century has seen economic research become increasingly empirical, while the nature of empirical economic research has also changed. In the 1960s and 1970s, an empirical economist's typical mission was to “explain” economic variables like wages or GDP growth. Applied econometrics has since evolved to prioritize the estimation of specific causal effects and empirical policy analysis over general models of outcome determination. Yet ec…
The perils of peer effects
Who Benefits from Kipp
The nation's largest charter management organization is the K nowledge is P ower P rogram ( KIPP ). KIPP schools are emblematic of the N o E xcuses approach to public education, a highly standardized and widely replicated charter model that features a long school day, an extended school year, selective teacher hiring, strict behavior norms, and emphasizes traditional reading and math skills. N o E xcuses charter schools are sometimes said to targ…
Accountability and Flexibility in Public Schools
We use student assignment lotteries to estimate the effect of charter school attendance on student achievement in Boston. We also evaluate a related alternative, Boston's pilot schools. Pilot schools have some of the independence of charter schools but are in the Boston Public School district and are covered by some collective bargaining provisions. Lottery estimates show large and significant score gains for charter students in middle and high s…
Causal Effects of Monetary Shocks
Multiple Experiments for the Causal Link between the Quantity and Quality of Children
This article presents evidence on the child-quantity/child-quality trade-off using quasi-experimental variation due to twin births and preferences for a mixed sibling sex composition, as well as ethnic differences in the effects of these variables. Our sample includes groups with very high fertility. An innovation in our econometric approach is the juxtaposition of results from multiple instrumental variables strategies, capturing the effects of …
The Credibility Revolution in Empirical Economics
Since Edward Leamer's memorable 1983 paper, "Let's Take the Con out of Econometrics," empirical microeconomics has experienced a credibility revolution. While Leamer's suggested remedy, sensitivity analysis, has played a role in this, we argue that the primary engine driving improvement has been a focus on the quality of empirical research designs. The advantages of a good research design are perhaps most easily apparent in research using random …
The Effects of High Stakes High School Achievement Awards
The Israeli matriculation certificate is a prerequisite for most postsecondary schooling. In a randomized trial, we attempted to increase certification rates among low-achievers with cash incentives. The experiment used a school-based randomization design offering awards to all who passed their exams in treated schools. This led to a substantial increase in certification rates for girls but had no effect on boys. Affected girls had a relatively h…
Mostly Harmless Econometrics
The core methods in today's econometric toolkit are linear regression for statistical control, instrumental variables methods for the analysis of natural experiments, and differences-in-differences methods that exploit policy changes. In the modern experimentalist paradigm, these techniques address clear causal questions such as: Do smaller classes increase learning? Should wife batterers be arrested? How much does education raise wages? Mostly H…
Rural Windfall or a New Resource Curse? Coca, Income, and Civil Conflict in Colombia
We study the consequences of an exogenous upsurge in coca prices and cultivation in Colombia, where most coca leaf is now harvested. This shift generated only modest economic gains in rural areas, primarily in the form of increased self-employment earnings and increased labor supply by teenage boys. The rural areas that saw accelerated coca production subsequently became considerably more violent, while urban areas were affected little. These fin…
Long-Term Educational Consequences of Secondary School Vouchers
Colombia's PACES program provided over 125,000 poor children with vouchers that covered the cost of private secondary school. The vouchers were renewable annually conditional on adequate academic progress. Since many vouchers were assigned by lottery, program effects can reliably be assessed by comparing lottery winners and losers. Estimates using administrative records suggest the PACES program increases secondary school completion rates by 15 t…
Is Spanish-only schooling responsible for the Puerto Rican language gap
Does School Integration Generate Peer Effects? Evidence from Boston's Metco Program
The Metropolitan Council for Educational Opportunity (Metco) is a desegregation program that sends students from Boston schools to more affluent suburbs. Metco increases the number of blacks and reduces test scores in receiving districts. School-level data for Massachusetts and micro data from a large district show no impact of Metco on the scores of white non-Metco students. But the micro estimates show some evidence of an effect on minority thi…
When to Control for Covariates? Panel Asymptotics for Estimates of Treatment Effects
The problem of when to control for continuous or high-dimensional discrete covariate vectors arises in both experimental and observational studies. Large-cell asymptotic arguments suggest that full control for covariates or stratification variables is always efficient, even if treatment is assigned independently of covariates or strata. Here, we approximate the behavior of different estimators using a panel-data-type asymptotic sequence with fixe…
Treatment Effect Heterogeneity in Theory and Practice
Instrumental Variables (IV) methods identify internally valid causal effects for individuals whose treatment status is manipulable by the instrument at hand. Inference for other populations requires homogeneity assumptions. This paper outlines a theoretical framework that nests causal homogeneity assumptions. These ideas are illustrated using sibling-sex composition to estimate the effect of childbearing on economic and marital outcomes. The appl…
Protective or counter-productive? labour market institutions and the effect of immigration on EU natives
Reduced labour market flexibility may protect some native workers from immigrant competition but can increase negative effects on equilibrium employment. This motivates an analysis of immigration effects interacted with institutions. OLS estimates for European countries show small, mostly negative immigration effects while an IV strategy based on immigrants from former Yugoslavia generates larger though mostly insignificant negative estimates. Sp…
Vouchers for Private Schooling in Colombia
Colombia used lotteries to distribute vouchers which partially covered the cost of private secondary school for students who maintained satisfactory academic progress. Three years after the lotteries, winners were about 10 percentage points more likely to have finished 8th grade, primarily because they were less likely to repeat grades, and scored 0.2 standard deviations higher on achievement tests. There is some evidence that winners worked less…
How Do Sex Ratios Affect Marriage and Labor Markets? Evidence from America's Second Generation
Sex ratios, i.e., relative numbers of men and women, can affect marriage prospects, labor force participation, and other social and economic variables. But the observed association between sex ratios and social and economic conditions may be confounded by omitted variables and reverse causality. This paper uses variation in immigrant flows as a natural experiment to study the effect of sex ratios on the children and grandchildren of immigrants. T…
Instrumental Variables Estimates of the Effect of Subsidized Training on the Quantiles of Trainee Earnings
The effect of government programs on the distribution of participants' earnings is important for program evaluation and welfare comparisons.This paper reports es- timates of the effects of JTPA training programs on the distribution of earnings.The estimation uses a new instrumental variable (IV) method that measures program impacts on the quantiles of outcome variables.This quantile treatment effects (QTE) estimator accommodates exogenous covaria…
New Evidence on Classroom Computers and Pupil Learning
How technology affects learning has been at the centre of recent debates over educational inputs. In 1994, the Israeli State Lottery sponsored the installation of computers in many elementary and middle schools. This programme provides an opportunity to estimate the impact of computerisation on both the instructional use of computers and pupil achievement. Results from a survey of Israeli school‐teachers show that the influx of new computers incr…
Estimation of Limited Dependent Variable Models With Dummy Endogenous Regressors
Applied economists have long struggled with the question of how to accommodate binary endogenous regressors in models with binary and nonnegative outcomes. I argue here that much of the difculty with limited dependent variables comes from a focus on structural parameters, such as index coefcients, instead of causal effects. Once the object of estimation is taken to be the causal effect of treatment, several simple strategies are available. These …
Does Compulsory School Attendance Affect Schooling and Earnings
We establish that season of birth is related to educational attainment because of school start age policy and compulsory school attendance laws. Individuals born in the beginning of the year start school at an older age, and can therefore drop out after completing less schooling than individuals born near the end of the year. Roughly 25 percent of potential dropouts remain in school because of compulsory schooling laws. We estimate the impact of …
The Credibility Revolution in Empirical Economics
Since Edward Leamer's memorable 1983 paper, "Let's Take the Con out of Econometrics," empirical microeconomics has experienced a credibility revolution. While Leamer's suggested remedy, sensitivity analysis, has played a role in this, we argue that the primary engine driving improvement has been a focus on the quality of empirical research designs. The advantages of a good research design are perhaps most easily apparent in research using random …
Treatment Effect Heterogeneity in Theory and Practice
Instrumental Variables (IV) methods identify internally valid causal effects for individuals whose treatment status is manipulable by the instrument at hand. Inference for other populations requires homogeneity assumptions. This paper outlines a theoretical framework that nests causal homogeneity assumptions. These ideas are illustrated using sibling-sex composition to estimate the effect of childbearing on economic and marital outcomes. The appl…
Protective or counter-productive? labour market institutions and the effect of immigration on EU natives
Reduced labour market flexibility may protect some native workers from immigrant competition but can increase negative effects on equilibrium employment. This motivates an analysis of immigration effects interacted with institutions. OLS estimates for European countries show small, mostly negative immigration effects while an IV strategy based on immigrants from former Yugoslavia generates larger though mostly insignificant negative estimates. Sp…
Consequences of Employment Protection? The Case of the Americans with Disabilities Act
The Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA) requires employers to accommodate disabled workers and outlaws discrimination against the disabled in hiring, firing, and pay. Although the ADA was meant to increase the employment of the disabled, the net theoretical effects are ambiguous. For men of all working ages and women under 40, Current Population Survey data show a sharp drop in the employment of disabled workers after the ADA went into effect. …
Who Benefits from Kipp
The nation's largest charter management organization is the K nowledge is P ower P rogram ( KIPP ). KIPP schools are emblematic of the N o E xcuses approach to public education, a highly standardized and widely replicated charter model that features a long school day, an extended school year, selective teacher hiring, strict behavior norms, and emphasizes traditional reading and math skills. N o E xcuses charter schools are sometimes said to targ…
New Evidence on Classroom Computers and Pupil Learning
How technology affects learning has been at the centre of recent debates over educational inputs. In 1994, the Israeli State Lottery sponsored the installation of computers in many elementary and middle schools. This programme provides an opportunity to estimate the impact of computerisation on both the instructional use of computers and pupil achievement. Results from a survey of Israeli school‐teachers show that the influx of new computers incr…
The Effect of Veterans Benefits on Education and Earnings
Veterans benefits that subsidize education and training constitute the largest federal program for student aid. Using data from the 1987 Survey of Veterans, the author presents estimates of the effect of veterans benefits on schooling completed since entering the military and on subsequent earnings. Veterans benefits are estimated to increase schooling by roughly 1.4 years, which implies annual earnings approximately 6% higher than would have bee…
Effects of Work-Related Absences on Families
The Gulf War provides an opportunity to estimate the effect of work-related separations on military families. Using data from the 1992 Survey of Officers and Enlisted Personnel, the authors estimate the effect of Gulf War deployment on divorce rates, spousal employment, and children's disability rates. Deployment of male soldiers had no effect on marital dissolution, though it did lead soldiers' wives to work less. In contrast, deployment of fema…
Is Spanish-only schooling responsible for the Puerto Rican language gap
Over-Identification Tests in Earnings Functions With Fixed Effects
The fixed-effects model for panel data imposes restrictions on coefficients from regressions of all leads and lags of the dependent variable on all leads and lags of right-side variables. In the standard fixed-effects model, the omnibus goodness-of-fit statistic is shown to simplify to the degrees of freedom times the Rz from a regression of analysis of covariance residuals on all leads and lags of right-side variables. This result is applied to …
Does Compulsory School Attendance Affect Schooling and Earnings
We establish that season of birth is related to educational attainment because of school start age policy and compulsory school attendance laws. Individuals born in the beginning of the year start school at an older age, and can therefore drop out after completing less schooling than individuals born near the end of the year. Roughly 25 percent of potential dropouts remain in school because of compulsory schooling laws. We estimate the impact of …
The Effect of Veterans Benefits on Education and Earnings
Veterans benefits that subsidize education and training constitute the largest federal program for student aid. Using data from the 1987 Survey of Veterans, the author presents estimates of the effect of veterans benefits on schooling completed since entering the military and on subsequent earnings. Veterans benefits are estimated to increase schooling by roughly 1.4 years, which implies annual earnings approximately 6% higher than would have bee…
Why Do World War II Veterans Earn More than Nonveterans?
World War II veterans earn more than nonveterans in their cohort. We test whether the World War II veteran premium reflects nonrandom selection into the military of men with higher earnings potential. The estimation is based on the fact that from 1942 to 1947 priority for conscription was determined by date of birth. Information on individuals' dates of birth may therefore be used to construct instrumental variables for veteran status. Empirical …
Identification and Estimation of Local Average Treatment Effects
We investigate conditions sufficient for identification of average treatment effects using instrumental variables. First we show that the existence of valid instruments is not sufficient to identify any meaningful average treatment effect. We then establish that the combination of an instrument and a condition on the relation between the instrument and the participation status is sufficient for identification of a local average treatment effect f…
Two-Stage Least Squares Estimation of Average Causal Effects in Models with Variable Treatment Intensity
Two-stage least squares (TSLS) is widely used in econometrics to estimate parameters in systems of linear simultaneous equations and to solve problems of omitted-variables bias in single-equation estimation. We show here that TSLS can also be used to estimate the average causal effect of variable treatments such as drug dosage, hours of exam preparation, cigarette smoking, and years of schooling. The average causal effect in which we are interest…
Split-Sample Instrumental Variables Estimates of the Return to Schooling
Two-stage least squares is biased in the same direction as ordinary least squares even in very large samples. The authors propose a split-sample instrumental variables estimator that is not biased toward ordinary least squares. Split-sample instrumental variables uses one-half of a sample to estimate parameters of the first-stage equation. Estimated first-stage parameters are then used to construct fitted values and second-stage parameter estimat…
Introduction to the JBES Symposium on Program and Policy Evaluation
Meyer. Each of the articles in this group relies on changes in state (or provincial) policies over time to identify the effect of policy changes. States instituting reforms constitute the treatment group, whereas nonreforming states are assumed to provide a valid control group. The treatment-control parison is made after differencing state observations across years. For example, in their article on Canadian national health insurance, Jon Gruber a…
Introduction to the "JBES" Symposium on Program and Policy Evaluation
Joshua D. Angrist, Introduction to the "JBES" Symposium on Program and Policy Evaluation, Journal of Business & Economic Statistics, Vol. 13, No. 2, JBES Symposium on Program and Policy Evaluation (Apr., 1995), pp. 133-136
Identification of Causal Effects Using Instrumental Variables
We outline a framework for causal inference in settings where assignment to a binary treatment is ignorable, but compliance with the assignment is not perfect so that the receipt of treatment is nonignorable. To address the problems associated with comparing subjects by the ignorable assignment—an “intention-to-treat analysis”—we make use of instrumental variables, which have long been used by economists in the context of regression models with c…
Schooling and Labor Market Consequences of the 1970 State Abortion Reforms
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Estimating the Labor Market Impact of Voluntary Military Service Using Social Security Data on Military Applicants
This study uses Social Security data on the earnings of military applicants to the all-volunteer forces to compare the earnings of Armed Forces veterans with the earnings of military applicants who did not enlist. Matching, regression, and Instrumental Variables (IV) estimates are presented. The matching and regression estimates control for most of the characteristics used by the military to select qualified applicants from the military applicant…
Empirical Strategies in Labor Economics
Using Maimonides' Rule to Estimate the Effect of Class Size on Scholastic Achievement
The twelfth century rabbinic scholar Maimonides proposed a maximum class size of 40. This same maximum induces a nonlinear and nonmonotonic relationship between grade enrollment and class size in Israeli public schools today. Maimonides' rule of 40 is used here to construct instrumental variables estimates of effects of class size on test scores. The resulting identification strategy can be viewed as an application of Donald Campbell's regression…
How Large Are Human-Capital Externalities? Evidence from Compulsory Schooling Laws
Many economists and policymakers believe that education creates positive externalities. Indeed, average schooling in U.S. states is highly correlated with state wage levels, even after controlling for the direct effect of schooling on individual wages. We use variation in child labor laws and compulsory attendance laws over time and across states to investigate whether this relationship is causal. Our results show external returns to education ar…
Effects of Work-Related Absences on Families
The Gulf War provides an opportunity to estimate the effect of work-related separations on military families. Using data from the 1992 Survey of Officers and Enlisted Personnel, the authors estimate the effect of Gulf War deployment on divorce rates, spousal employment, and children's disability rates. Deployment of male soldiers had no effect on marital dissolution, though it did lead soldiers' wives to work less. In contrast, deployment of fema…
Estimation of Limited Dependent Variable Models With Dummy Endogenous Regressors
Applied economists have long struggled with the question of how to accommodate binary endogenous regressors in models with binary and nonnegative outcomes. I argue here that much of the difculty with limited dependent variables comes from a focus on structural parameters, such as index coefcients, instead of causal effects. Once the object of estimation is taken to be the causal effect of treatment, several simple strategies are available. These …
Instrumental Variables and the Search for Identification
Instrumental variables was first used in the 1920s to estimate supply and demand elasticities and later to correct for measurement error in single equation models. Recently, instrumental variables have been widely used to reduce bias from omitted variables in estimates of causal relationships. Intuitively, instrumental variables methods use only a portion of the variability in key variables to estimate the relationships of interest; if the instru…
Consequences of Employment Protection? The Case of the Americans with Disabilities Act
The Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA) requires employers to accommodate disabled workers and outlaws discrimination against the disabled in hiring, firing, and pay. Although the ADA was meant to increase the employment of the disabled, the net theoretical effects are ambiguous. For men of all working ages and women under 40, Current Population Survey data show a sharp drop in the employment of disabled workers after the ADA went into effect. …
Vouchers for Private Schooling in Colombia
Colombia used lotteries to distribute vouchers which partially covered the cost of private secondary school for students who maintained satisfactory academic progress. Three years after the lotteries, winners were about 10 percentage points more likely to have finished 8th grade, primarily because they were less likely to repeat grades, and scored 0.2 standard deviations higher on achievement tests. There is some evidence that winners worked less…
How Do Sex Ratios Affect Marriage and Labor Markets? Evidence from America's Second Generation
Sex ratios, i.e., relative numbers of men and women, can affect marriage prospects, labor force participation, and other social and economic variables. But the observed association between sex ratios and social and economic conditions may be confounded by omitted variables and reverse causality. This paper uses variation in immigrant flows as a natural experiment to study the effect of sex ratios on the children and grandchildren of immigrants. T…
Instrumental Variables Estimates of the Effect of Subsidized Training on the Quantiles of Trainee Earnings
The effect of government programs on the distribution of participants' earnings is important for program evaluation and welfare comparisons.This paper reports es- timates of the effects of JTPA training programs on the distribution of earnings.The estimation uses a new instrumental variable (IV) method that measures program impacts on the quantiles of outcome variables.This quantile treatment effects (QTE) estimator accommodates exogenous covaria…
New Evidence on Classroom Computers and Pupil Learning
How technology affects learning has been at the centre of recent debates over educational inputs. In 1994, the Israeli State Lottery sponsored the installation of computers in many elementary and middle schools. This programme provides an opportunity to estimate the impact of computerisation on both the instructional use of computers and pupil achievement. Results from a survey of Israeli school‐teachers show that the influx of new computers incr…
Protective or counter-productive? labour market institutions and the effect of immigration on EU natives
Reduced labour market flexibility may protect some native workers from immigrant competition but can increase negative effects on equilibrium employment. This motivates an analysis of immigration effects interacted with institutions. OLS estimates for European countries show small, mostly negative immigration effects while an IV strategy based on immigrants from former Yugoslavia generates larger though mostly insignificant negative estimates. Sp…
Does School Integration Generate Peer Effects? Evidence from Boston's Metco Program
The Metropolitan Council for Educational Opportunity (Metco) is a desegregation program that sends students from Boston schools to more affluent suburbs. Metco increases the number of blacks and reduces test scores in receiving districts. School-level data for Massachusetts and micro data from a large district show no impact of Metco on the scores of white non-Metco students. But the micro estimates show some evidence of an effect on minority thi…
Economics (33 obras) · Econometrics (23 obras) · Mathematics (20 obras) · Statistics (18 obras) · Political science (14 obras) · Instrumental variable (13 obras) · Advanced Causal Inference Techniques (12 obras) · Demographic economics (12 obras) · Psychology (11 obras) · School Choice and Performance (11 obras)