This paper develops a simple approach to overcome the shortcomings of using a standard, single treatment-effect event study to assess the ability of an empirical model to measure heterogeneous treatment effects. Equally as important, we discuss how the standard errors reported in a typical...

Using rich geospatial data analyzed with 'causal' and explainable machine learning methods, this paper studies Africa’s spatial economy and maps potential benefits from public infrastructure investments. Results imply that infrastructure in Africa is spatially concentrated and often...

Natural resource revenues contribute to sustainable development when they are reinvested sufficiently in public services, such as education, that offer long-term social returns. Cross-country evidence suggests that resource-rich countries fail at this, spending less on public services than...

This paper employs a new empirical approach to estimate the impact of subsidies on growth and productivity. Our key innovation is to use local political leader geographic rotation as a source of exogenous variation. By using Chinese Industrial Census data from 1999 to 2013, we find that more...

In regression discontinuity designs with multiple running variables (MRD), units are assigned different treatments based on whether their values on several observed running variables exceed known thresholds. In such designs, applied work commonly analyzes each running variable separately,...