The Pre‐programme Earnings Dip and the Determinants of Participation in a Social Programme. Implications for Simple Programme Evaluation Strategies

摘要: The key to estimating the impact of a programme is constructing counterfactual outcome representing what would have happened in its absence. This problem becomes more complicated when agents, such as individuals, firms or local governments, self-select into rather than being exogenously assigned it. paper uses data from major social experiment identify earnings self-selected participants job training had they not participated We investigate implications these patterns for validity widely-used before-after and difference-in-differences estimators.