Searcharxiv⌕ Search

arXiv subjects

Bernard Salanié

Publications and source records attributed to Bernard Salanié.

9 recordsLinked to original sources
arXiv2026

Treatment Effects with Targeting Instruments

Multivalued treatments are commonplace in applications. We explore the use of discrete-valued instruments to control for selection bias in this setting. Our discussion revolves around the concept of targeting: which instruments target which treatments. It allows us to establish conditions under which counterfactual averages and treatment effects are point- or partially-identified for composite complier groups. We explore the additional identifying power of a positive selection assumption. We illustrate its usefulness by revisiting the findings of Kline and Walters (2016) on the Head Start Impact Study. We derive informative bounds that suggest less beneficial effects of Head Start expansions than their parametric estimates.

econ.EM↗
arXiv2023

Cupid's Invisible Hand: Social Surplus and Identification in Matching Models

We investigate a model of one-to-one matching with transferable utility and general unobserved heterogeneity. Under a separability assumption that generalizes Choo and Siow (2006), we first show that the equilibrium matching maximizes a social gain function that trades off exploiting complementarities in observable characteristics and matching on unobserved characteristics. We use this result to derive simple closed-form formulae that identify the joint matching surplus and the equilibrium utilities of all participants, given any known distribution of unobserved heterogeneity. We provide efficient algorithms to compute the stable matching and to estimate parametric versions of the model. Finally, we revisit Choo and Siow's empirical application to illustrate the potential of our more general approach.

econ.GN↗
arXiv2022

Estimating Separable Matching Models

In this paper we propose two simple methods to estimate models of matching with transferable and separable utility introduced in Galichon and Salanié (2022). The first method is a minimum distance estimator that relies on the generalized entropy of matching. The second relies on a reformulation of the more special but popular Choo and Siow (2006) model; it uses generalized linear models (GLMs) with two-way fixed effects.

econ.EM↗
arXiv2021

Matching with Trade-offs: Revealed Preferences over Competing Characteristics

We investigate in this paper the theory and econometrics of optimal matchings with competing criteria. The surplus from a marriage match, for instance, may depend both on the incomes and on the educations of the partners, as well as on characteristics that the analyst does not observe. Even if the surplus is complementary in incomes, and complementary in educations, imperfect correlation between income and education at the individual level implies that the social optimum must trade off matching on incomes and matching on educations. Given a flexible specification of the surplus function, we characterize under mild assumptions the properties of the set of feasible matchings and of the socially optimal matching. Then we show how data on the covariation of the types of the partners in observed matches can be used to test that the observed matches are socially optimal for this specification, and to estimate the parameters that define social preferences over matches.

econ.GN↗
arXiv2021

On Human Capital and Team Stability

In many economic contexts, agents from a same population team up to better exploit their human capital. In such contexts (often called "roommate matching problems"), stable matchings may fail to exist even when utility is transferable. We show that when each individual has a close substitute, a stable matching can be implemented with minimal policy intervention. Our results shed light on the stability of partnerships on the labor market. Moreover, they imply that the tools crafted in empirical studies of the marriage problem can easily be adapted to many roommate problems.

econ.GN↗
arXiv2021

Inference on two component mixtures under tail restrictions

Many econometric models can be analyzed as finite mixtures. We focus on two-component mixtures and we show that they are nonparametrically point identified by a combination of an exclusion restriction and tail restrictions. Our identification analysis suggests simple closed-form estimators of the component distributions and mixing proportions, as well as a specification test. We derive their asymptotic properties using results on tail empirical processes and we present a simulation study that documents their finite-sample performance.

econ.EM↗
arXiv2018

Identifying Effects of Multivalued Treatments

Multivalued treatment models have typically been studied under restrictive assumptions: ordered choice, and more recently unordered monotonicity. We show how treatment effects can be identified in a more general class of models that allows for multidimensional unobserved heterogeneity. Our results rely on two main assumptions: treatment assignment must be a measurable function of threshold-crossing rules, and enough continuous instruments must be available. We illustrate our approach for several classes of models.

econ.EM↗