This paper analyzes the impact of participation in job creation schemes (JCSs) on job search outcomes in the context of the turbulent East German labor market in the aftermath of the German reunification. High job destruction characterized the economic environment. JCSs were heavily used in...

It is well known that it is important to control the bias in estimating conditional expectations in order to obtain asymptotic normality for quantities of interest (e.g. a finite dimensional parameter vector in semiparametric models or averages of marginal effects in the nonparametric case). For...

In the causal inference literature a class of semi-parametric estimators is called robust if the estimator has desirable properties under the assumption that at least one of the working models is correctly specified. A standard example is a doubly robust estimator that specifies parametric...

This article develops a theoretical model for evaluating mandatory activation of welfare recipients in complex activation programmes. The model aims to summarize and describe heterogeneous content that is difficult to comprehend because of local variations, staff characteristics, or other...

We propose instrumental variable(IV) estimators for quantile marginal effects and the parameters upon which they depend in a semiparametric outcome model with endogenous discrete treatment variables. We prove identification, consistency, and asymptotic normality of the estimators. We also show...

An estimand of interest in empirical studies with observational data is the average treatment effect of a multi-valued treatment in the treated subpopulation. We demonstrate three estimation approaches: outcome regression, inverse probability weighting and inverse probability weighted...

Controlling the bias is central to estimating semiparametric models. Many methods have been developed to control bias in estimating conditional expectations while main- taining a desirable variance order. However, these methods typically do not perform well at moderate sample sizes. Moreover,...

Women without work after childbirth are at risk of losing their connection to the labor market. However, they may participate in adult education programs. We analyze the effect of this on the duration to work and on the wage rate, by applying conditional difference-in-differences approaches. We...

In observational studies, the non-parametric estimation of a binary treatment effect is often performed by matching each treated individual with a control unit which is similar in observed characteristics (covariates). In practical applications, the reservoir of covariates available may be...

The Business Cycle Dating Committee (BCDC) of the National Bureau of Economic Research provides a historical chronology of business cycle turning points. This paper investigates three central aspects about this chronology: (1) How skillful is the BCDC in classifying economic activity into...