Econometrica Vol. 94 No. 5 2026
Causal Inference for Spatial Treatments
Abstract
Many events and policies (treatments) occur at specific spatial locations, with researchers interested in their effects on nearby units. I approach the spatial treatment setting from an experimental perspective: What ideal experiment would we design to estimate the causal effects of spatial treatments? This perspective motivates a comparison between units near realized treatment locations and units near counterfactual (unrealized) candidate locations, which differs from current empirical practice. I derive design‐based standard errors that are straightforward to compute. For observational data, I propose machine learning methods to find counterfactual candidate locations when observable characteristics, rather than potential outcomes, determine treatment probabilities. To accommodate methods for high‐dimensional data in the theory, I extend a double machine learning result to the design‐based framework with spatial correlations. I apply the proposed methods to study the causal effects of grocery stores on foot traffic to nearby businesses during COVID‐19 shelter‐in‐place policies, finding a large positive effect at very short distances, with no effect at larger distances.
- DOI
- 10.3982/ecta21571
- Volume
- 94
- Issue
- 5
- Pages
- 1529-1561
- Language
- en
- Sources
- crossref