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Cited by 169Advanced Causal Inference TechniquesStatistical Methods and Bayesian InferenceStatistical Methods and Inference

The DOI matches its Crossref record; 31 of the 31 references it cites were found in a registry or an index.

Robust Post-Matching Inference

Abadie, Alberto, Spiess, Jann·2022·Journal of the American Statistical Association
DOI 10.1080/01621459.2020.1840383
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Abstract

Nearest-neighbor matching is a popular nonparametric tool to create balance between treatment and control groups in observational studies. As a preprocessing step before regression, matching reduces the dependence on parametric modeling assumptions. In current empirical practice, however, the matching step is often ignored in the calculation of standard errors and confidence intervals. In this article, we show that ignoring the matching step results in asymptotically valid standard errors if matching is done without replacement and the regression model is correctly specified relative to the population regression function of the outcome variable on the treatment variable and all the covariates used for matching. However, standard errors that ignore the matching step are not valid if matching is conducted with replacement or, more crucially, if the second step regression model is misspecified in the sense indicated above. Moreover, correct specification of the regression model is not required for consistent estimation of treatment effects with matched data. We show that two easily implementable alternatives produce approximations to the distribution of the post-matching estimator that are robust to misspecification. A simulation study and an empirical example demonstrate the empirical relevance of our results. Supplementary materials for this article are available online.

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  1. Huber P. J., 1967, Proceedings of the Fifth Berkeley Symposium on Mathematical Statistics and Probability, 1, 221

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Metadata

Authors
Abadie, A., & Spiess, J.
Affiliations
  • Massachusetts Institute of Technology (US)
  • Stanford University (US)
Corresponding author
Abadie, Alberto
ORCID
Spiess, Jann
Venue
Journal of the American Statistical Association
Publisher
Informa UK Limited
Published
2021-01-14
Volume
117
Issue
538
Pages
983-995
ISSN
  • 0162-1459 (ISSN-L)
  • 1537-274X
DOI
10.1080/01621459.2020.1840383
OpenAlex
W2912110689
Cited by
169
References
31
Citations by year
2026: 19 · 2025: 30 · 2024: 38 · 2023: 25 · 2022: 20 · 2021: 13
FWCI
12.03
Type
journal article
Language
en
Open access
closed
Locations
  • Journal of the American Statistical Association (publishedVersion)
  • RePEc: Research Papers in Economics (submittedVersion)
Funders
NSF (SES 0961707)
Topics
  • Physical Sciences › Mathematics › Statistics and Probability › Advanced Causal Inference Techniques
  • Physical Sciences › Mathematics › Statistics and Probability › Statistical Methods and Bayesian Inference
  • Physical Sciences › Mathematics › Statistics and Probability › Statistical Methods and Inference
Keywords
nearest neighbor matching, standard errors, confidence intervals, model misspecification, treatment effect estimation, matched data, asymptotic validity, robust inference, observational studies, covariate balance

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