Design-Based Uncertainty for Quasi-Experiments
Name
Design-Based Uncertainty for Quasi-Experiments.pdf
Description
Published version
Size
2 MB
Format
Adobe PDF
Checksum (MD5)
8e87c43b30ab36ed4493f1e37421882d
Author(s)
Rambachan, Ashesh
Roth, Jonathan
Date Issued
August 27, 2025
Journal
Journal of the American Statistical Association
Publisher
Taylor & Francis
Citation
Rambachan, A., & Roth, J. (2025). Design-Based Uncertainty for Quasi-Experiments. Journal of the American Statistical Association, 1–15.
Version
Final published version
Abstract
Design-based frameworks of uncertainty are frequently used in settings where the treatment is (conditionally) randomly assigned. This article develops a design-based framework suitable for analyzing quasi-experimental settings in the social sciences, in which the treatment assignment can be viewed as the realization of some stochastic process but there is concern about unobserved selection into treatment. In our framework, treatments are stochastic, but units may differ in their probabilities of receiving treatment, thereby allowing for rich forms of selection. We provide conditions under which the estimands of popular quasi-experimental estimators correspond to interpretable finite-population causal parameters. We characterize the biases and distortions to inference that arise when these conditions are violated. These results can be used to conduct sensitivity analyses when there are concerns about selection into treatment. Taken together, our results establish a rigorous foundation for quasi-experimental analyses that more closely aligns with the way empirical researchers discuss the variation in the data. Supplementary materials for this article are available online, including a standardized description of the materials available for reproducing the work.
MIT Department
Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Department of Economics
Terms of Use
Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives
Persistent DSpace Link
DOI of Published Version
https://doi.org/10.1080/01621459.2025.2526700
