Quantitative Economics
Journal Of The Econometric Society
Edited by: Stéphane Bonhomme • Print ISSN: 1759-7323 • Online ISSN: 1759-7331
Edited by: Stéphane Bonhomme • Print ISSN: 1759-7323 • Online ISSN: 1759-7331
Quantitative Economics: Jul, 2021, Volume 12, Issue 3
Chunrong Ai, Oliver Linton, Kaiji Motegi, Zheng Zhang
This paper presents a weighted optimization framework that unifies the binary, multivalued, and continuous treatment—as well as mixture of discrete and continuous treatment—under a unconfounded treatment assignment. With a general loss function, the framework includes the average, quantile, and asymmetric least squares causal effect of treatment as special cases. For this general framework, we first derive the semiparametric efficiency bound for the causal effect of treatment, extending the existing bound results to a wider class of models. We then propose a generalized optimization estimator for the causal effect with weights estimated by solving an expanding set of equations. Under some sufficient conditions, we establish the consistency and asymptotic normality of the proposed estimator of the causal effect and show that the estimator attains the semiparametric efficiency bound, thereby extending the existing literature on efficient estimation of causal effect to a wider class of applications. Finally, we discuss estimation of some causal effect functionals such as the treatment effect curve and the average outcome. To evaluate the finite sample performance of the proposed procedure, we conduct a small‐scale simulation study and find that the proposed estimation has practical value. In an empirical application, we detect a significant causal effect of political advertisements on campaign contributions in the binary treatment model, but not in the continuous treatment model.
Causal effect entropy maximization treatment effect semiparametric efficiency sieve method stabilized weights C14 C21March 5, 2024
The terms of the Editors of the Econometric Society's three journals end June 30, 2025. We are pleased to announce the incoming Editors and to thank the outgoing Editors for their excellent and continuing service.
Econometrica: Since 2019, Guido Imbens has served as the 14th Editor of Econometrica. On July 1, 2025, Marina Halac will become the Editor.
Quantitative Economics: Stéphane Bonhomme has been the Editor of Quantitative Economics since 2021. His successor will be Bernard Salanié.
Theoretical Economics: The Editor of Theoretical Economics since 2021 has been Simon Board. Taking over for him in July 2025 will be Federico Echenique.
Guido, Stéphane, and Simon have been outstanding Editors. We are grateful to them for the work they have done and will continue to do, and we look forward to further congratulating them next year. We believe Marina, Bernard, and Federico will be outstanding successors and we thank them in advance for their service.
Finally, we are grateful to Larry Samuelson for chairing all three search committees, and we thank the search committee members for their hard and fruitful work:
Econometrica: Christian Dustmann, Lars Hansen, Alessandro Lizzeri, George Mailath, Ariel Pakes, Helene Rey, and Elie Tamer.
QE: Kate Ho, Michael Keane, Felix Kubler, Whitney Newey, and Frank Schorfheide.
TE: Jeff Ely, Johannes Horner, Gilat Levy, Meg Meyer, and Ran Spiegler.