Introduction
In my book, Causal Inference: the Mixtape, I list some popular IV designs such as Bartik instruments, judge fixed effects and lotteries. These are IV approaches that have been done so many times that they almost seem to be their own sub-IV design itself. The close election design is like this too — an approach in the regression discontinuity approach that has been repeated dozens of times to the point that the nuances associated it have become more salient to practitioners. Finding these I think can be helpful because they are often suggestive that particular situations are common enough that we may find them in the wild. And in preparing for a new course at Scholar Site on causal inference for tech and industry, I think I have noticed an IV design that I am just calling the “consideration set design”.
Good instruments are strange
Instrumental variables designs require a DAG system fitting the attached drawing. I often refer to the exclusion restriction (where Z is indep…
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