Can variation in subgroups' average treatment effects explain treatment effect heterogeneity? Evidence from a social experiment

We assess whether welfare reform affects earnings only through mean impacts that are constant within but vary across subgroups. This is important because researchers interested in treatment effect heterogeneity typically focus on estimating mean impacts that only vary across subgroups. Using a novel approach to simulating treatment group earnings under the constant mean impacts within subgroup model, we find this model does a poor job of capturing treatment effect heterogeneity for Connecticut's Jobs First welfare reform experiment. Notably, ignoring within-group heterogeneitywould lead one to miss evidence that treatment effects are consistent with basic labor supply theory

Can variation in subgroups' average treatment effects explain treatment effect heterogeneity? Evidence from a social experiment

We assess whether welfare reform affects earnings only through mean impacts that are constant within but vary across subgroups. This is important because researchers interested in treatment effect heterogeneity typically focus on estimating mean impacts that only vary across subgroups. Using a novel approach to simulating treatment group earnings under the constant mean impacts within subgroup model, we find this model does a poor job of capturing treatment effect heterogeneity for Connecticut's Jobs First welfare reform experiment. Notably, ignoring within-group heterogeneitywould lead one to miss evidence that treatment effects are consistent with basic labor supply theory

Healthy vs. unhealthy food: a strategic choice for firms and consumers

In this paper, we carry out a theoretical analysis of the strategic choice made by firms regarding the type of food they market when they face consumers who care about the healthy/unhealthy attributes of the product but incur in emotional/health costs when the food they consume has unhealthy attributes. We consider a two-stage game. In the first stage, one of the firms chooses the unhealthy content of its product. In the second stage, both firms simultaneously decide their prices. We find that, depending on the parameters of the model, product differentiation can be maximal or less than maximal. The firm that produces the unhealthy food charges a higher price and obtains a larger share of the market unless the emotional/health costs and the unhealthy food production costs are relatively high. We also find that educational campaigns will not always reduce the demand for the unhealthy food or the degree of the unhealthy attribut

Child-care costs and mothers’ employment rates: an empirical analysis for Austria

The availability of affordable institutional child-care is increasingly discussed as an important determinant of the labour force participation of parents, particularly of mothers. This paper examines the impact of child-care costs on the employment rates of mothers with children younger than 15 years. Using data from the 1995 and 2002 Austrian Microcensus, combined with wage information from Austrian tax records, we estimate the impact of net wages and child-care costs on mothers' employment probabilities. In line with theoretical considerations and most of the international sub-literature, we find a negative elasticity of mothers' employment rates to child-care costs as well as positive elasticity with regard to wages. The point estimates for the impact of net-wages and child-care costs are of similar absolute size. Additionally, empirical results indicate that higher family income (without the earned income of the mother) reduces the employment probabilities of mothers