Estimating long-term treatment effects without long-term outcome data
David Rhys Bernard (Rethink Priorities), Jojo Lee and Victor Yaneng Wang (Global Priorities Institute, University of Oxford)
GPI Working Paper No. 13-2023
The surrogate index method allows policymakers to estimate long-run treatment effects before long-run outcomes are observable. We meta-analyse this approach over nine long-run RCTs in development economics, comparing surrogate estimates to estimates from actual long-run RCT outcomes. We introduce the M-lasso algorithm for constructing the surrogate approach’s first-stage predictive model and compare its performance with other surrogate estimation methods. Across methods, we find a negative bias in surrogate estimates. For the M-lasso method, in particular, we investigate reasons for this bias and quantify significant precision gains. This provides evidence that the surrogate index method incurs a bias-variance trade-off.
Other working papers
Intergenerational experimentation and catastrophic risk – Fikri Pitsuwan (Center of Economic Research, ETH Zurich)
I study an intergenerational game in which each generation experiments on a risky technology that provides private benefits, but may also cause a temporary catastrophe. I find a folk-theorem-type result on which there is a continuum of equilibria. Compared to the socially optimal level, some equilibria exhibit too much, while others too little, experimentation. The reason is that the payoff externality causes preemptive experimentation, while the informational externality leads to more caution…
How effective is (more) money? Randomizing unconditional cash transfer amounts in the US – Ania Jaroszewicz (University of California San Diego), Oliver P. Hauser (University of Exeter), Jon M. Jachimowicz (Harvard Business School) and Julian Jamison (University of Oxford and University of Exeter)
We randomized 5,243 Americans in poverty to receive a one-time unconditional cash transfer (UCT) of $2,000 (two months’ worth of total household income for the median participant), $500 (half a month’s income), or nothing. We measured the effects of the UCTs on participants’ financial well-being, psychological well-being, cognitive capacity, and physical health through surveys administered one week, six weeks, and 15 weeks later. While bank data show that both UCTs increased expenditures, we find no evidence that…
Longtermism, aggregation, and catastrophic risk – Emma J. Curran (University of Cambridge)
Advocates of longtermism point out that interventions which focus on improving the prospects of people in the very far future will, in expectation, bring about a significant amount of good. Indeed, in expectation, such long-term interventions bring about far more good than their short-term counterparts. As such, longtermists claim we have compelling moral reason to prefer long-term interventions. …