UC Davis Agricultural and Resource Economics

Steve Miller, University of Minnesota

Tree-based Estimation of Heterogeneous Dynamic Policy Effects

Date and Location

Wednesday, October 17, 2018, 3:30 PM - 5:00 PM
ARE Library Conference Room, 4101 Social Sciences and Humanities

Abstract

Understanding variation in policy e ects in both cross-sectional and temporal dimensions can help improve policy targeting, set expectations regarding timing of e ects, and assess whether policy implementation has improved over time. To that end, this paper extends recent work adapting regression trees and random forests for identification of heterogeneous treatment effects. Specifically, I adapt those methods to a panel setting, illustrating how dynamic selection assumptions and estimators can be combined with causal forest approaches to jointly investigate not only cross-sectional heterogeneity, but also dynamics of policy effects and changes in implementation effectiveness. To illustrate and evaluate the utility of the approach, I reanalyze how property rights impact the probability of natural resource collapse, finding substantial heterogeneity and nonlinear time dependencies not identified in prior work.


Subscribe to Upcoming Seminars

Click here to receive weekly notice of all upcoming seminars via email.

Individual seminar and workshop announcements are circulated via separate mailing lists. To subscribe, send an email to the relevant list:

Contact Us

2116 Social Sciences and Humanities
University of California, Davis
One Shields Avenue
Davis, CA 95616

Main Office: 530-752-1515
Student Advising Services: 530-754-9536
DeLoach Conference Room: 530-752-2916
Main Conference Room: 530-754-1850