Testing for covariate balance using quantile regression and resampling methods

Martin Huber

University of St. Gallen Department of Economics working paper series 2010 from Department of Economics, University of St. Gallen

Abstract: Consistency of propensity score matching estimators hinges on the propensity score's ability to balance the distributions of covariates in the pools of treated and nontreated units. Conventional balance tests merely check for differences in covariates' means, but cannot account for differences in higher moments. Specification tests constitute an alternative, but might reject misspecified, but yet balancing propensity score models. This paper proposes balance tests based on (i) quantile regression to check for differences in the distributions of continuous covariates and (ii) resampling methods to estimate the distributions of the proposed Kolmogorov-Smirnov and Cramer-von-Mises-Smirnov test statistics. Simulations suggest that the tests capture imbalances related to higher moments when conventional balance tests fail to do so and correctly keep misspecified, but balancing propensity scores when specification tests reject the null.

Keywords: Balancing property; balance test; propensity score matching (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: C12 C15 C21 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Pages: 34 pages
Date: 2010-06
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-ecm
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (2)

Downloads: (external link)
http://ux-tauri.unisg.ch/RePEc/usg/dp2010/DP-1018-Hu.pdf (application/pdf)

Related works:
Journal Article: Testing for covariate balance using quantile regression and resampling methods (2011)
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:usg:dp2010:2010-18

Access Statistics for this paper

More papers in University of St. Gallen Department of Economics working paper series 2010 from Department of Economics, University of St. Gallen Contact information at EDIRC.
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Martina Flockerzi ().