ReEvaluating the Evaluation of Training Programs.pdf

Causal Effects in Non-Experimental Studies: * Re-Evaluating the Evaluation of Training Programs Rajeev H. Dehejia and Sadek Wahba cite as Rajeev Dehejia and Sadek Wahba, “Causal Effects in Non-Experimental Studies: Re-Evaluating the Evaluation of Training Programs”, in Rajeev Dehejia, Econometric Methods for Program Evaluation , Ph.D. Dissertation, Harvard University, 1997, Chapter 1. * We gratefully acknowledge the tireless encouragement and support of Gary Chamberlain, Guido Imbens, and Donald Rubin. We thank Robert Lalonde, who kindly provided the data from his 1986 study and provided substantial help in recreating the original data set. We are also grateful to Joshua Angrist, George Cave, David Cutler, Lawrence Katz, Caroline Minter-Hoxby, and participants at the Harvard -MIT labor seminar, the Harvard econometrics and labor lunch seminars, the MIT labor lunch seminar, and a seminar at the Manpower Development Research Corporation (MDRC) for many suggestions and comments. All remaining errors are the authors’ responsibility. The first author acknowledges support from a Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada grant and the second author acknowledges support from a World Bank Fellowship. Correspondence Address: Department of Economics, University of Toronto. 150 St. George Street, Toronto ON M5S 3G7, Canada. E-mail: rdehejia@chass.utoronto.ca. Causal Effects in Non-Experimental Studies: Re-Evaluating the Evaluation of Training Programs Abstract The need to use randomized experiments in the context of manpower training programs, and in analyzing causal effec