mhbounds - Sensitivity Analysis for Average Treatment Effects

Sascha Becker and Marco Caliendo

No 2542, IZA Discussion Papers from Institute of Labor Economics (IZA)

Abstract: Matching has become a popular approach to estimate average treatment effects. It is based on the conditional independence or unconfoundedness assumption. Checking the sensitivity of the estimated results with respect to deviations from this identifying assumption has become an increasingly important topic in the applied evaluation literature. If there are unobserved variables which affect assignment into treatment and the outcome variable simultaneously, a hidden bias might arise to which matching estimators are not robust. We address this problem with the bounding approach proposed by Rosenbaum (2002), where mhbounds allows the researcher to determine how strongly an unmeasured variable must influence the selection process in order to undermine the implications of the matching analysis.

Keywords: unobserved heterogeneity; sensitivity analysis; treatment effects; matching (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: C40 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Pages: 15 pages
Date: 2007-01
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Citations: View citations in EconPapers (244)

Published - published in: Stata Journal, 2007, 7(1), 71-83

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Journal Article: Sensitivity analysis for average treatment effects (2007)
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