External Treatment Effects and Program Implementation Bias

Tomas Philipson

No 9929, Working Papers from Harris School of Public Policy Studies, University of Chicago

Abstract: This paper discusses the definition and identification of external treatment effects and experimental designs capable of detecting these effects. External effects occur when the outcome of a given individual is affected by the treatment assignments of other individuals. The paper argues that two-stage randomization schemes, which randomize allocation of treatments across communities and randomizes the treatments themselves within communities, are useful for identifying private and external treatment effects. The importance of external treatment effects are illustrated in the context of several health economics applications: the impact of R&D subsidies, smoking prevention programs for youth, and the evaluation of HIV-prevention programs currently taking place in Africa.

Keywords: external treatment effects; experimental design; program implementation; randomization (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 1999-12
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations:

Downloads: (external link)
http://harrisschool.uchicago.edu/about/publication ... ers/pdf/wp_99_29.pdf (application/pdf)

Related works:
Working Paper: External Treatment Effects and Program Implementation Bias (2000)
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:har:wpaper:9929

Access Statistics for this paper

More papers in Working Papers from Harris School of Public Policy Studies, University of Chicago Contact information at EDIRC.
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Eleanor Cartelli ( this e-mail address is bad, please contact ).