We revisit the much-investigated relationship between schooling and health, focusing on cognitive abilities at older ages using the Harmonized Cognition Assessment Protocol in the Health & Retirement Study. To address endogeneity concerns, we employ a nonparametric partial identification...

An important goal when analyzing the causal effect of a treatment on an outcome is to understand the mechanisms through which the treatment causally works. We define a causal mechanism effect of a treatment and the causal effect net of that mechanism using the potential outcomes framework. These...

We derive nonparametric sharp bounds on average treatment effects with an instrumental variable (IV) and use them to evaluate the effectiveness of the Job Corps (JC) training program for disadvantaged youth. We concentrate on the population average treatment effect (ATE) and the average...

We examine the effect of educational attainment on criminal behavior using random assignment into Job Corps (JC) – the United States' largest education and vocational training program for disadvantaged youth – as a source of exogenous variability in educational attainment. We allow such...

We consider the problem of assessing the effects of a treatment on duration outcomes using data from a randomized evaluation with noncompliance. For such settings, we derive nonparametric sharp bounds for average and quantile treatment effects addressing three pervasive problems simultaneously:...

It is well-established that (1) there is a large genetic component to mental health, and (2) higher schooling attainment is associated with better mental health. Given these two observations, we test the hypothesis that schooling may attenuate the genetic predisposition to poor mental health....

We examine the relationship between BMI and mental health for young adults and elderly individuals using data from the National Longitudinal Study of Adolescent Health and the Health & Retirement Study. While OLS estimates show that BMI is significantly associated with worse mental health in...

We derive nonparametric sharp bounds on average treatment effects with an instrumental variable (IV) and use them to evaluate the effectiveness of the Job Corps training program for disadvantaged youth. We focus on the population average treatment effect (ATE) and the average treatment effect on...

It is well-established that (1) there is a large genetic component to mental health, and (2) higher schooling attainment is associated with better mental health. Given these two observations, we test the hypothesis that schooling may attenuate the genetic predisposition to poor mental health....

We estimate the effect of BMI on mental health for young adults and elderly individuals using data from the National Longitudinal Study of Adolescent Health and the Health & Retirement Study. To tackle confounding due to unobserved factors, we exploit variation in a polygenic score (PGS) for BMI...