This paper modifies the Wald development of statistical decision theory to offer new perspective on the performance of certain statistical treatment rules. We study the quantile performance of test rules, ones that use the outcomes of hypothesis tests to allocate a population to two treatments....

One of the main objectives of empirical analysis of experiments and quasi-experiments is to inform policy decisions that determine the allocation of treatments to individuals with different observable covariates. We propose the Empirical Welfare Maximization (EWM) method, which estimates a...

We use experimental data to disentangle signaling and budgetary effects of price on wine demand. The experimental design allow us to isolate in a simple and intuitive way the two effects. The signaling effect is present and nonlinear: it is strongly positive between EUR3 and EUR5, and...

Planners of surveys and experiments that partially identify parameters of interest face trade offs between using limited resources to reduce sampling error and using them to reduce the extent of partial identification. I evaluate these trade offs in a simple statistical problem with normally...

We separate the budgetary and non-budgetary effects of price on demand using choice data from wine tasting experiments in which consumers tasted wines of different quality accompanied by fictitious price information. The non-budgetary effect is present and nonlinear: it is strongly positive...

This paper studies the problem of treatment choice between a status quo treatment with a known outcome distribution and an innovation whose outcomes are observed only in a finite sample. I evaluate statistical decision rules, which are functions that map sample outcomes into the planner’s...

This paper studies the problem of treatment choice between a status quo treatment with a known outcome distribution and an innovation whose outcomes are observed only in a representative finite sample. I evaluate statistical decision rules, which are functions that map sample outcomes into the...

The importance of social programs to a diverse population creates a legitimate concern that the findings of evaluations be widely credible. The weaker are the assumptions imposed, the more widely credible are the findings. The classical argument for random assignment of treatments is viewed by...

This report uses data from the authors' National Survey of Economic Expectations to describe how, during 1994, working Americans with health insurance perceived the risk of near-term deterioration in their economic status. Perceived economic vulnerability is measured through responses to...