Statistics for Spatial Data.

We investigate conditions sufficient for identification of average treatment effects using instrumental variables. First we show that the existence of valid instruments is not sufficient to identify any meaningful average treatment effect. We then establish that the combination of an instrument and a condition on the relation between the instrument and the participation status is sufficient for identification of a local average treatment effect for those who can be induced to change their participation status by changing the value of the instrument. Finally we derive the probability limit of the standard IV estimator under these conditions. It is seen to be a weighted average of local average treatment effects.

Evolution and Rationality Some Recent Game-Theoretic Results. Identification and Estimation of Local Average Treatment Effects

Economics Of Discrimination

https://www.nber.org/system/files/working_papers/w22595/w22595.pdf

Understanding and misunderstanding randomized controlled trials.

Breaking with the exoticizing cast of public discourse and conventional research, Urban Outcasts takes the reader inside the black ghetto of Chicago and the deindustrializing banlieue of Paris to discover that urban marginality is not everywhere the same. Drawing on a wealth of original field, survey and historical data, Loïc Wacquant shows that the involution of America's urban core after the 1960s is due not to the emergence of an 'underclass', but to the joint withdrawal of market and state fostered by public policies of racial separation and urban abandonment. In European cities, by contrast, the spread of districts of 'exclusion' does not herald the formation of ghettos. It stems from the decomposition of working-class territories under the press of mass unemployment, the casualization of work and the ethnic mixing of populations hitherto segregated, spawning urban formations akin to 'anti-ghettos'.

Urban Outcasts: A comparative sociology of advanced marginality

In this paper we relate gender differences in willingness to commute to the gender wage gap. Using unique administrative data on job search criteria, we first document that unemployed women have a lower reservation wage than comparable men and that the maximum commute they are willing to accept is smaller. We also find that they get lower wages and shorter commutes in their next job. We then identify indifference curves between wage and commute using the joint distributions of reservation job attributes and of accepted job bundles. Indifference curves are steeper for women, who value commute around 20% more than men. Through the lens of a job search model where commuting matters, we estimate that around 10% of the gender wage gap is accounted for by gender differences in the willingness to pay for a shorter commute. Finally, we use job application data to test the robustness of our results and to show that female workers do not receive less demand from far-away employers, confirming that most of the gender gap in commute is supply-side driven.

/pdf/gender-differences-in-job-search-trading-off-commute-against-4j1xpl6ri4.pdf

Gender Differences in Job Search: Trading off Commute against Wage

We consider the issue of measuring segregation in a population of small units, considering establishments in our application. Each establishment may have a different probability of hiring an individual from the minority group. We define segregation indices as inequality indices on these unobserved, random probabilities. Because these probabilities are measured with error by proportions, standard estimators are inconsistent. We model this problem as a nonparametric binomial mixture. Under this testable assumption and conditions satisfied by standard segregation indices, such indices are partially identified and sharp bounds can be easily obtained by an optimization over a low dimensional space. We also develop bootstrap confidence intervals and a test of the binomial mixture model. Finally, we apply our method to measure the segregation of foreigners in small French firms.

Segregation small units partial identification C13 C14 J71

http://www.hec.unil.ch/documents/seminars/deep/1283.pdf

Measuring segregation on small units: A partial identification analysis

Ce travail revient sur les resultats de trois experiences controlees conduites en France de 2006 a 2010 visant a evaluer des dispositifs d’accompagnement renforce de demandeurs d’emploi. Il en ressort plusieurs conclusions utiles pour la conception des futurs programmes. En particulier, au regard de leur cout, l’efficacite des operateurs prives de placement semble faible. Globalement, l’accompagnement des demandeurs d’emploi est une politique dont les effets sont amoindris par des effets d’eviction importants. Cela devrait conduire a privilegier ce type de programme au benefice de populations tres ciblees, eloignees de l’emploi.

/pdf/l-accompagnement-personnalise-des-demandeurs-d-emploi-51utgteotl.pdf

L'accompagnement personnalisé des demandeurs d'emploi

Delattre Eric, Leandri Noam, Meurs Dominique, Rathelot Roland. Introduction - Trois approches de la discrimination : evaluations indirectes, experimentation, discriminations ressenties. In: Economie et statistique, n°464-466, 2013. Inegalites et discriminations : questions de mesure. pp. 7-13.

Introduction - Trois approches de la discrimination : évaluations indirectes, expérimentation, discriminations ressenties

Could we significantly reduce U.S. unemployment by helping job seekers move closer to jobs? Using data from the leading employment board CareerBuilder.com, we show that, indeed, workers dislike applying to distant jobs: job seekers are 35% less likely to apply to a job 10 miles away from their ZIP code of residence. However, because job seekers are close enough to vacancies on average, this distaste for distance is fairly inconsequential: our search and matching model predicts that relocating job seekers to minimize unemployment would decrease unemployment by only 5.3%. Geographic mismatch is thus a minor driver of aggregate unemployment.Institutional subscribers to the NBER working paper series, and residents of developing countries may download this paper without additional charge at www.nber.org.

Roland Rathelot

Papers

Gender Differences in Job Search: Trading off Commute against Wage

Measuring segregation on small units: A partial identification analysis

L'accompagnement personnalisé des demandeurs d'emploi

Introduction - Trois approches de la discrimination : évaluations indirectes, expérimentation, discriminations ressenties

Mismatch Unemployment and the Geography of Job Search