@article{THESIS,
      recid = {10145},
      author = {Yu, Zeyang},
      title = {Essays on Causal Inference and Its Applications in  Empirical Political Economy},
      publisher = {University of Chicago},
      school = {Ph.D.},
      address = {2023-12},
      number = {THESIS},
      pages = {142},
      abstract = {This dissertation studies causal inference and its  applications in empirical political economy. Chapter 1  studies a binary Imbens-Angrist instrumental variable model  for persuasion. In the empirical study of persuasion,  researchers often use a binary instrument to encourage  individuals to consume information and take some action. We  show that with the Imbens-Angrist instrumental variable  model assumptions and the monotone treatment response  assumption, it is possible to identify the joint  distributions of potential outcomes among compliers. This  is necessary to identify the percentage of persuaded  individuals and their statistical characteristics.  Specifically, we develop a weighting method that helps  researchers identify the statistical characteristics of  persuasion types: compliers and always-persuaded, compliers  and persuaded, and compliers and never-persuaded. These  findings extend the “Kappa weighting” results in Abadie  (2003). We also provide a sharp test on the two sets of  identification assumptions. The test boils down to testing  whether there exists a nonnegative solution to a possibly  under-determined system of linear equations with known  coefficients. An application based on Green et al. (2003)  is provided. The result shows that among compliers, roughly  10% voters are persuaded. The results are consistent with  the findings that voters' voting behaviors are highly  persistent.

Chapter 2 applies the methods developed in the  first chapter to three empirical examples (Enikolopov et  al., 2011, Blattman and Annan, 2016, Chen and Yang, 2019).  The results illustrate the usefulness of the methods.  Re-analyzing Enikolopov et al. (2011) informed us that most  of the voters were persuaded, and the persuaded voters were  likely to be middle-aged and male. Re-analyzing Blattman  and Annan (2016) informed us that around 20% of the  Liberian ex-fighters were persuaded, and the persuaded  ex-fighters were more likely to be risky type. Re-analyzing  Chen and Yang (2019) informed us that roughly 20% of the  students were persuaded, and the persuaded students were  likely to come from wealthy families, come from coastal  areas, less risk-loving, and less likely to believe in the  inherent goodness of people.

Chapter 3, coauthored with  Hongchang Guo, studies when the validity of triple  difference depends on functional form. Here, the functional  form refers to the transformations on the outcome variables  (e.g., taking the logarithm of the outcome variable). Build  on Roth and Sant’Anna (2023), we provide a novel  characterization: the “modified” parallel trends assumption  in the triple difference design holds under all measurable  transformations of the outcome if and only if a stronger  “modified” parallel trends-type condition holds for the  cumulative distribution function of untreated potential  outcomes. Another equivalent condition for “modified”  parallel trends to be insensitive to functional form is  that the population can be partitioned into subgroups for  which the treatment is effectively not (as-if) randomly  assigned and a remaining part that is stable over time,  which contrasts sharply to the decomposition results in  Roth and Sant’Anna (2023). These conditions have testable  implications on the distribution of the unobservable but  identifiable untreated potential outcomes for the treated  group in the treated period. Testing these implications  boils down to testing a family of moment inequalities. We  revisit Muralidharan and Prakash (2017) to illustrate the  methodology we propose.},
      url = {http://knowledge.uchicago.edu/record/10145},
      doi = {https://doi.org/10.6082/uchicago.10145},
}