Does Matching Overcome Lalonde's Critique of Nonexperimental Estimators?

Jeffrey Andrew Smith () and Petra Todd

No 20035, University of Western Ontario, CIBC Human Capital and Productivity Project Working Papers from University of Western Ontario, CIBC Human Capital and Productivity Project

Abstract: This paper applies cross-sectional and longitudinal propensity score matching estimators to data from the National Supported Work (NSW) Demonstration that have been previously analyzed by LaLonde (1986) and Dehejia and Wahba (1999, 2002). We find that estimates of the impact of NSW based on propensity score matching are highly sensitive to both the set of variables included in the scores and the particular analysis sample used in the estimation. Among the estimators we study, the difference-in-differences matching estimator performs the best. We attribute its performance to the fact that it eliminates potential sources of temporally-invariant bias present in the NSW data, such as geographic mismatch between participants and non-participants and the use of a dependent variable measured in different ways for the two groups. Our analysis demonstrates that while propensity score matching is a potentially useful econometric tool, it does not represent a general solution to the evaluation problem.

Date: 2003
View list of references View citations in EconPapers

Downloads: (external link)
http://economics.uwo.ca/centres/cibc/wp2003/Smith05.pdf (application/pdf)

Related works:
Journal Article: Does matching overcome LaLonde's critique of nonexperimental estimators? (2005)
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: http://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:uwo:hcuwoc:20035

Ordering information: This working paper can be ordered from
http://economics.uwo ... mittingordering.html
The price is Paper copy available by mail at a cost of $10.00 Canadian each.

Access Statistics for this paper

More papers in University of Western Ontario, CIBC Human Capital and Productivity Project Working Papers from University of Western Ontario, CIBC Human Capital and Productivity Project
Address: CIBC Human Capital and Productivity Project, Social Science Centre, University of Western Ontario, London, Ontario, Canada N6A 5C2
Series data maintained by ().