IDENTIFYING MECHANISMS BEHIND POLICY INTERVENTIONS VIA CAUSAL MEDIATION ANALYSIS
Causal analysis in program evaluation has primarily focused on the question about whether or not a program, or package of policies, has an impact on the targeted outcome of interest. However, it is often of scientific and practical importance to also explain why such impacts occur. In this paper, we...
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| Formato: | Artigo |
| Idioma: | en_US |
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Wiley Blackwell
2015
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| Acesso em linha: | http://hdl.handle.net/1721.1/99741 https://orcid.org/0000-0002-8079-7675 |
| _version_ | 1826197013515993088 |
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| author | Keele, Luke Tingley, Dustin Yamamoto, Teppei |
| author2 | Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Department of Political Science |
| author_facet | Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Department of Political Science Keele, Luke Tingley, Dustin Yamamoto, Teppei |
| author_sort | Keele, Luke |
| collection | MIT |
| description | Causal analysis in program evaluation has primarily focused on the question about whether or not a program, or package of policies, has an impact on the targeted outcome of interest. However, it is often of scientific and practical importance to also explain why such impacts occur. In this paper, we introduce causal mediation analysis, a statistical framework for analyzing causal mechanisms that has become increasingly popular in social and medical sciences in recent years. The framework enables us to show exactly what assumptions are sufficient for identifying causal mediation effects for the mechanisms of interest, derive a general algorithm for estimating such mechanism-specific effects, and formulate a sensitivity analysis for the violation of those identification assumptions. We also discuss an extension of the framework to analyze causal mechanisms in the presence of treatment noncompliance, a common problem in randomized evaluation studies. The methods are illustrated via applications to two intervention studies on pre-school classes and job-training workshops. |
| first_indexed | 2024-09-23T10:41:23Z |
| format | Article |
| id | mit-1721.1/99741 |
| institution | Massachusetts Institute of Technology |
| language | en_US |
| last_indexed | 2024-09-23T10:41:23Z |
| publishDate | 2015 |
| publisher | Wiley Blackwell |
| record_format | dspace |
| spelling | mit-1721.1/997412022-09-30T22:15:25Z IDENTIFYING MECHANISMS BEHIND POLICY INTERVENTIONS VIA CAUSAL MEDIATION ANALYSIS Keele, Luke Tingley, Dustin Yamamoto, Teppei Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Department of Political Science Yamamoto, Teppei Causal analysis in program evaluation has primarily focused on the question about whether or not a program, or package of policies, has an impact on the targeted outcome of interest. However, it is often of scientific and practical importance to also explain why such impacts occur. In this paper, we introduce causal mediation analysis, a statistical framework for analyzing causal mechanisms that has become increasingly popular in social and medical sciences in recent years. The framework enables us to show exactly what assumptions are sufficient for identifying causal mediation effects for the mechanisms of interest, derive a general algorithm for estimating such mechanism-specific effects, and formulate a sensitivity analysis for the violation of those identification assumptions. We also discuss an extension of the framework to analyze causal mechanisms in the presence of treatment noncompliance, a common problem in randomized evaluation studies. The methods are illustrated via applications to two intervention studies on pre-school classes and job-training workshops. 2015-11-09T12:49:54Z 2015-11-09T12:49:54Z 2015-05 Article http://purl.org/eprint/type/JournalArticle 02768739 1520-6688 http://hdl.handle.net/1721.1/99741 Keele, Luke, Dustin Tingley, and Teppei Yamamoto. “IDENTIFYING MECHANISMS BEHIND POLICY INTERVENTIONS VIA CAUSAL MEDIATION ANALYSIS.” Journal of Policy Analysis and Management 34, no. 4 (May 20, 2015): 937–963. https://orcid.org/0000-0002-8079-7675 en_US http://dx.doi.org/10.1002/pam.21853 Journal of Policy Analysis and Management Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-Share Alike http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-sa/4.0/ application/pdf Wiley Blackwell Yamamoto |
| spellingShingle | Keele, Luke Tingley, Dustin Yamamoto, Teppei IDENTIFYING MECHANISMS BEHIND POLICY INTERVENTIONS VIA CAUSAL MEDIATION ANALYSIS |
| title | IDENTIFYING MECHANISMS BEHIND POLICY INTERVENTIONS VIA CAUSAL MEDIATION ANALYSIS |
| title_full | IDENTIFYING MECHANISMS BEHIND POLICY INTERVENTIONS VIA CAUSAL MEDIATION ANALYSIS |
| title_fullStr | IDENTIFYING MECHANISMS BEHIND POLICY INTERVENTIONS VIA CAUSAL MEDIATION ANALYSIS |
| title_full_unstemmed | IDENTIFYING MECHANISMS BEHIND POLICY INTERVENTIONS VIA CAUSAL MEDIATION ANALYSIS |
| title_short | IDENTIFYING MECHANISMS BEHIND POLICY INTERVENTIONS VIA CAUSAL MEDIATION ANALYSIS |
| title_sort | identifying mechanisms behind policy interventions via causal mediation analysis |
| url | http://hdl.handle.net/1721.1/99741 https://orcid.org/0000-0002-8079-7675 |
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