Direct and indirect treatment effects: causal chains and mediation analysis with instrumental variables

Markus Frölich () and Martin Huber

No 2015:12, Working Paper Series from IFAU - Institute for Evaluation of Labour Market and Education Policy

Abstract: This paper discusses the nonparametric identification of causal direct and indirect effects of a binary treatment based on instrumental variables. We identify the indirect effect, which operates through a mediator (i.e. intermediate variable) that is situated on the causal path between the treatment and the outcome, as well as the unmediated direct effect of the treatment using distinct instruments for the endogenous treatment and the endogenous mediator. We examine different settings to obtain nonparametric identi-fication of (natural) direct and indirect as well as controlled direct effects for continuous and discrete mediators and continuous and discrete instruments. We illustrate our approach in two applications: to disentangle the effects (i) of education on health, which may be mediated by income, and (ii) of the Job Corps training program, which may affect earnings indirectly via working longer hours and directly via higher wages per hour.

Keywords: Direct treatment effects; mediation analysis (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: C13 C14 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Pages: 73 pages
Date: 2015-06-04
Note: Journal of the Royal Statistical Society Series B, November 2017, vol. 79, no. 5, pp. 1645-1666. https://doi.org/10.1111/rssb.12232
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (1)

Downloads: (external link)
http://www.ifau.se/Upload/pdf/se/2015/wp2015-12-Di ... reatment-effects.pdf (application/pdf)
Our link check indicates that this URL is bad, the error code is: 404 Not Found (http://www.ifau.se/Upload/pdf/se/2015/wp2015-12-Direct-and-indirect-treatment-effects.pdf [301 Moved Permanently]--> https://www.ifau.se/Upload/pdf/se/2015/wp2015-12-Direct-and-indirect-treatment-effects.pdf)

Related works:
Journal Article: Direct and indirect treatment effects–causal chains and mediation analysis with instrumental variables (2017)
Working Paper: Direct and indirect treatment effects: causal chains and mediation analysis with instrumental variables (2014)
Working Paper: Direct and indirect treatment effects: causal chains and mediation analysis with instrumental variables (2014)
Working Paper: Direct and Indirect Treatment Effects: Causal Chains and Mediation Analysis with Instrumental Variables (2014)
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:hhs:ifauwp:2015_012

DOI: 10.1111/rssb.12232

Access Statistics for this paper

More papers in Working Paper Series from IFAU - Institute for Evaluation of Labour Market and Education Policy IFAU, P O Box 513, SE-751 20 Uppsala, Sweden. Contact information at EDIRC.
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Ali Ghooloo ( this e-mail address is bad, please contact ).