This paper assesses UK innovation policy impact on a large, population weighted, sample of both service and manufacturing SMEs. By focussing on self-reported innovation the study achieves a wider coverage of the effects of SME innovation policy than possible with more traditional indicators. Propensity score matching indicates that SMEs receiving UK state support for innovation were more likely...

In this article, we develop new methods for estimating average treatment effects in observational studies, in settings with more than two treatment levels, assuming unconfoundedness given pretreatment variables. We emphasize propensity score subclassification and matching methods which have been among the most popular methods in the binary treatment literature. Whereas the literature has sugges...

In medical research logistic regression and Cox proportional hazards regression analysis, in which all the confounders are included as covariates, are often used to estimate an adjusted treatment effect in observational studies. In the last decade the method of propensity scores has been developed as an alternative adjustment method and many examples of applications can be found in the literatu...

More than 124 governmental entities concerned about suburban sprawl and farmland loss have implemented farmland preservation programs preserving 1.67 million acres at a cost of $3.723 billion. Yet little analysis on these programs’ effectiveness in slowing farmland loss has been conducted. Using a unique 50-year 269 county panel data set on preservation programs and farmland loss for six Mid-At...

We use propensity scores to evaluate the effect of Food Stamps on food insecurity, a measure of inadequate food supply. Data come from the Early Childhood Longitudinal Study–Kindergarten Cohort. Propensity scores offer an advantage over traditional linear regression methods because they address omitted variable bias associated with Food Stamp use by matching similarly situated treatment and con...

Skills shortages and skill mismatch are a pressing concern for policymakers in several developing countries, and in East Asia specifically. Providing on-the-job training can be an effective policy tool to shape the skills of the existent workforce to the specific needs of the firms. This paper explores a unique data set of matched employer-employee data for Malaysia and Thailand to estimate the...

The internal validity of an observational study is enhanced by only comparing sets of treated and control subjects which have sufficient overlap in their covariate distributions. Methods have been developed for defining the study population using propensity scores to ensure sufficient overlap. However, a study population defined by propensity scores is difficult for other investigators to under...

Marital dissolution is commonly assumed to cause increased depression among adults, but causality can be questioned based on directionality and third variable concerns. The present study improves upon past research by using a propensity score matching algorithm to identify a sub-sample of continuously married participants equivalent in divorce risk to participants who actually experienced separ...

Recent researches in econometrics and statistics have gained considerable insights into the use of instrumental variables (IVs) for causal inference. A basic idea is that IVs serve as an experimental handle, the turning of which may change each individual’s treatment status and, through and only through this effect, also change observed outcome. The average difference in observed outcome relati...

Title of Thesis: TO DETAIN OR NOT TO DETAIN? USING PROPENSITY SCORES TO EXAMINE THE RELATIONSHIP BETWEEN PRETRIAL DETENTION AND CONVICTION Jacqueline Lee, Master of Arts, 2014 Thesis directed by: Associate Professor Brian Johnson, Department of Criminology and Criminal Justice Scholars have long known that individuals who are detained prior to their sentencing fare worse in the criminal justice...