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Full-Text Articles in Labor Relations
Group-Average Observables As Controls For Sorting On Unobservables When Estimating Group Treatment Effects: The Case Of School And Neighborhood Effects, Joseph G. Altonji, Richard K. Mansfield
Group-Average Observables As Controls For Sorting On Unobservables When Estimating Group Treatment Effects: The Case Of School And Neighborhood Effects, Joseph G. Altonji, Richard K. Mansfield
Rick Mansfield
We consider the classic problem of estimating group treatment effects when individuals sort based on observed and unobserved characteristics. Using a standard choice model, we show that controlling for group averages of observed individual characteristics potentially absorbs all the across-group variation in unobservable individual characteristics. We use this insight to bound the treatment effect variance of school systems and associated neighborhoods for various outcomes. Across four datasets, our conservative estimates indicate that a 90th versus 10th percentile school system increases high school graduation and college enrollment probabilities by at least 0.047 and 0.11. Other applications include measurement of teacher value-added.
Demographic Change, Social Security Systems, And Savings, David E. Bloom, David Canning, Rick Mansfield, Michael Moore
Demographic Change, Social Security Systems, And Savings, David E. Bloom, David Canning, Rick Mansfield, Michael Moore
Rick Mansfield
In theory, improvements in healthy life expectancy should generate increases in the average age of retirement, with little effect on savings rates. In many countries, however, retirement incentives in social security programs prevent retirement ages from keeping pace with changes in life expectancy, leading to an increased need for life-cycle savings. Analyzing a cross-country panel of macroeconomic data, we find that increased longevity raises aggregate savings rates in countries with universal pension coverage and retirement incentives, though the effect disappears in countries with pay-as-you-go systems and high replacement rates.