6 Potential Outcomes, Causal Inference, and Randomized Trials

Readings

Mastering Metrics, Chapter 1

Lecture

Slides from Lecture 6

Optional Lab

This lab makes use of the data set E1-CohenEtAl-data.dta, a subset of the data used in the paper Price Subsidies, Diagnostic Tests, and Targeting of Malaria Treatment: Evidence from a Randomized Controlled Trial by Jessica Cohen, Pascaline Dupas, and Simone Schaner, published in the American Economic Review in 2015. The authors examine behavioral responses to various discounts (“subsidies”) for malaria treatment, called “artemisinin combination therapy” or “ACT.” An overview of the randomized evalaution is available here.

The lab template is available here. It is an R script, but it can also be opened in Python.