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A Causal Interpretation of Extensive and Intensive Margin Effects in Generalized Tobit Models

Kevin E. Staub

The University of Melbourne

The Review of Economics and Statistics 2014

This note proposes a new decomposition of average treatment effects on nonnegative outcomes. It represents the total effect as a population-weighted sum of the effects for two groups: those induced to participate by the treatment and those participating regardless of it. The usual decomposition into extensive and intensive margins used in the literature is generally incompatible with such a causal interpretation. The difference between decompositions can be substantial and yield diametrically opposed results.

DOI
10.1162/rest_a_00350
Volume
96 (2)
Pages
371-375
Language
en
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