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  5. Interpreting TSLS Estimators in Information Provision Experiments

American Economic Review: Insights

ISSN 2640-205X (Print) | ISSN 2640-2068 (Online)

Interpreting TSLS Estimators in Information Provision Experiments

  • Vod Vilfort
  • Whitney Zhang
American Economic Review: Insights (Forthcoming)

Abstract

In information provision experiments, researchers often estimate the causal effects of beliefs on actions using two-stage least squares (TSLS). This paper formalizes exclusion and monotonicity conditions that ensure TSLS recovers a positive-weighted average of causal effects. We assess common TSLS estimators for both passive and active control designs from the literature; we find that two commonly-used passive control estimators generally allow for negative weights. The choice of passive control estimator affects the magnitude and significance of estimates in simulations and in an empirical application. We give practical recommendations for addressing these issues.

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