Leaders, elites, and the media may put ideas on the shelf, but that doesn’t mean people will buy them. And when they do, it may often be best to conclude that the message has struck a responsive chord rather than that the public has been manipulated

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...

The primary emphasis of quantitative marketing is on the evaluation of firm policies for determination of marketing variables as well as the optimization of these policies. Thus, our methods of inference must apply to decision problems and to policy evaluation. In addition, the data we have...

This paper examines the application of quasi-experimental methods in environmental economics. We begin with two observations: (i) standard quasi-experimental methods, first applied in other microeconomic fields, typically assume unit-level treatments that do not spill over across units; (ii)...

This study estimates the establishment-level employment effects of investment grants in Germany. In addition to the average treatment effect on the treated, we analyse the influence of establishment’s characteristics and economic environment on the magnitude of the effect. We apply a...

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...