Better LATE Than Nothing推荐.pdfVIP

Journal of Economic Literature 48 (June 2010): 399–423 http:/articles.php?doi=10.1257/jel.48.2.399 Better LATE Than Nothing: Some  Comments on Deaton (2009) and  Heckman and Urzua (2009)  Guido W. Imbens* Two recent papers, Deaton (2009) and Heckman and Urzua (2009), argue against what they see as an excessive and inappropriate use of experimental and quasi-exper- imental methods in empirical work in economics in the last decade. They specifically question the increased use of instrumental variables and natural experiments in labor economics and of randomized experiments in development economics. In these com- ments, I will make the case that this move toward shoring up the internal validity of estimates, and toward clarifying the description of the population these estimates are relevant for, has been important and beneficial in increasing the credibility of empiri- cal work in economics. I also address some other concerns raised by the Deaton and Heckman–Urzua papers. (JEL C21, C31) 1.  Introduction last  decade.1  Deaton  and  HU  reserve  much  of their scorn for the local average treatment  T wo  recent  papers,  Angus  S.  Deaton  effect (LATE) introduced in the econometric  (2009) (Deaton from hereon) and James  literature by Guido W. Imbens and Joshua D.  J.  Heckman  and  Sergio  Urzua  (2009)  (HU  Angrist  (1994)  (IA  from  hereon).  HU  write:  from  hereon),  argue  against  what  they  see  “Problems of identification and interpretation  as  an  excessive  and  inappropriate  use  of  are  swept  under the  rug  and  replaced by  ‘an  experimental  and  quasi-experimental  meth-