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Pages 869-905
Accepted author version posted online: 14 Jun 2013
Published online:20 Feb 2014
 
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Sample selection and attrition are inherent in a range of treatment evaluation problems such as the estimation of the returns to schooling or training. Conventional estimators tackling selection bias typically rely on restrictive functional form assumptions that are unlikely to hold in reality. This paper shows identification of average and quantile treatment effects in the presence of the double selection problem into (i) a selective subpopulation (e.g., working—selection on unobservables) and (ii) a binary treatment (e.g., training—selection on observables) based on weighting observations by the inverse of a nested propensity score that characterizes either selection probability. Weighting estimators based on parametric propensity score models are applied to female labor market data to estimate the returns to education.

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

I have benefited from comments by Joshua D. Angrist, Eva Deuchert, Markus Frölich, Michael Lechner, Giovanni Mellace, Blaise Melly, and Rudi Stracke, seminar/conference participants in St. Gallen, Engelberg, Bern, Innsbruck, Boston, and Mannheim, and two anonymous referees.