Accepted, Journal of Econometrics

We discuss using Wasserstein Generative Adversarial Networks (WGANs) as a method for systematically generating artificial data that mimic closely any given real data set without the researcher having many degrees of freedom. We apply the methods to compare in three different settings twelve different estimators for average treatment effects under unconfoundedness.

Accepted, Journal of Business & Economic Statistics

We propose using a Bayesian hierarchical latent class model to summarize and interpret observed heterogeneity in categorical expectations data. We show that the statistical model corresponds to an economic structural model of information acquisition, which guides interpretation and estimation of the model parameters.

Status: Submitted

We study the problem of a planner who wants to reduce inequality by awarding prizes to the worst contestants in a tournament without incentivizing shirking. We design an approximately optimal, incentive-compatible mechanism that targets low-ranked contestants based on the tournament's history up to an endogenous stopping time. We describe applications to eligibility for remedial education, retraining benefits for the unemployed, and draft lotteries in sports.

This paper provides a general model of how personalized policy creates incentives for individuals to modify their behavior to obtain a better treatment. For a given planner objective, I show that standard estimators that assume pre-treatment characteristics are exogeneous produce a suboptimal policy. I propose a dynamic experiment that estimates the optimal treatment allocation function when agents are strategic.