Causal inference for qualitative outcomes

Riccardo Di Francesco and Giovanni Mellace

Economics Letters, 2025, vol. 256, issue C

Abstract: Causal inference methods such as instrumental variables, regression discontinuity, and difference-in-differences are widely used to identify and estimate treatment effects. However, when outcomes are qualitative, their application poses fundamental challenges. This paper highlights these challenges and proposes an alternative framework that focuses on well-defined and interpretable estimands. We show that conventional identification assumptions suffice for identifying the new estimands and outline simple, intuitive estimation strategies that remain fully compatible with conventional econometric methods. We provide an accompanying open-source R package, causalQual, which is publicly available on CRAN.

Keywords: Probability shift; Multinomial outcomes; Ordered non-numeric outcomes (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: C21 C26 C31 C35 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2025
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Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:eee:ecolet:v:256:y:2025:i:c:s016517652500463x

DOI: 10.1016/j.econlet.2025.112626

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