Must-Read: Susan Athey and Guido W. Imbens: The State of Applied Econometrics–Causality and Policy Evaluation

Must-Read: Susan Athey and Guido W. Imbens: The State of Applied Econometrics–Causality and Policy Evaluation: “Important for empirical researchers working on policy evaluation questions…

…[are, first,] new research on identification strategies in program evaluation… synthetic control methods, regression discontinuity, external validity, and the causal interpretation of regression methods. Second… supplementary analyses to make the identification strategies more credible… placebo analyses as well as sensitivity and robustness analyses. Third… recent advances in machine learning methods… to adjust for differences between treated and control units in high-dimensional settings, and… for identifying and estimating heterogenous treatment effects…