<p>This paper develops methods for evaluating marginal policy changes. We characterize how the effects of marginal policy changes depend on the direction of the policy change, and show that marginal policy effects are fundamentally easier to identify and to estimate than conventional treatment parameters. We develop the connection between marginal policy effects and the average effect of treatment for persons on the margin of indifference between participation in treatment and nonparticipation, and use this connection to analyze both parameters. We apply our analysis to estimate the effect of marginal changes in tuition on the return to going to college.</p>
Authors
Research Fellow University College London
Pedro is a Professor of Economics at University College London and an economist in the IFS' Centre for Microdata Methods and Practice (cemmap).
Research Associate University of Chicago
James is a Research Associate of the IFS and the Henry Schultz Distinguished Service Professor of Economics at the University of Chicago.
NYU
Working Paper details
- DOI
- 10.1920/wp.cem.2009.2109
- Publisher
- IFS
Suggested citation
P, Carneiro and J, Heckman and E, Vytlacil. (2009). Evaluating marginal policy changes and the average effect of treatment for individuals at the margin. London: IFS. Available at: https://ifs.org.uk/publications/evaluating-marginal-policy-changes-and-average-effect-treatment-individuals-margin (accessed: 19 May 2024).
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