Authors
James J Heckman, Hidehiko Ichimura, Petra E Todd
Publication date
1997/10/1
Journal
The review of economic studies
Volume
64
Issue
4
Pages
605-654
Publisher
Wiley-Blackwell
Description
This paper considers whether it is possible to devise a nonexperimental procedure for evaluating a prototypical job training programme. Using rich nonexperimental data, we examine the performance of a two-stage evaluation methodology that (a) estimates the probability that a person participates in a programme and (b) uses the estimated probability in extensions of the classical method of matching. We decompose the conventional measure of programme evaluation bias into several components and find that bias due to selection on unobservables, commonly called selection bias in econometrics, is empirically less important than other components, although it is still a sizeable fraction of the estimated programme impact. Matching methods applied to comparison groups located in the same labour markets as participants and administered the same questionnaire eliminate much of the bias as conventionally …
Total citations
Scholar articles
JJ Heckman, H Ichimura, PE Todd - The review of economic studies, 1997
JJ Heckman, H Ichimura, P Todd - The review of economic studies, 1998