Inference on counterfactual distributions
Bibliographic record
Abstract
We develop inference procedures for policy analysis based on regression methods. We consider policy interventions that correspond to either changes in the distribution of covariates, or changes in the conditional distribution of the outcome given covariates, or both. Under either of these policy scenarios, we derive functional central limit theorems for regression-based estimators of the status quo and counterfactual marginal distributions. This result allows us to construct simultaneous confidence sets for function-valued policy effects, including the effects on the marginal distribution function, quantile function, and other related functionals. We use these confidence sets to test functional hypotheses such as no-effect, positive effect, or stochastic dominance. Our theory applies to general policy interventions and covers the main regression methods including classical, quantile, duration, and distribution regressions. We illustrate the results with an empirical application on wage decompositions using data for the United States. Of independent interest is the use of distribution regression as a tool for modeling the entire conditional distribution, encompassing duration/transformation regression, and representing an alternative to quantile regression.
Fetched live from OpenAlex and de-inverted. Abstracts are not stored in this database: the inverted indexes are 8.6 GB of the frame’s 9.3 GB of text, and the host has 13 GB free.
How this classification was reachedexpand
Full frame machine prediction
Teacher imitationNot calibrated prevalence, not ground truth. Human validation pending. The Gemma side is a direct model label for every work in the frame, read from the title-only record. The Codex side is a classifier learned from the 10,348 direct Codex labels and calibrated to design-weighted sample rates; fields without enough sample support carry no Codex call. Candidate is the union of the two sides; consensus is their intersection. These outputs are machine_predicted_unvalidated and are not human labels.
Distilled classifier scores by category (both heads)
| Category | Codex | Gemma |
|---|---|---|
| Metaresearch | 0.043 | 0.192 |
| Meta-epidemiology (narrow) | 0.001 | 0.001 |
| Meta-epidemiology (broad) | 0.002 | 0.003 |
| Bibliometrics | 0.005 | 0.004 |
| Science and technology studies | 0.001 | 0.003 |
| Scholarly communication | 0.004 | 0.007 |
| Open science | 0.004 | 0.003 |
| Research integrity | 0.002 | 0.006 |
| Insufficient payload (model declined to judge) | 0.012 | 0.001 |
Machine scores (provisional)
The two teacher heads of the student model, read on this work. A score orders the frame for review; it never asserts a category, and the validation status ships verbatim with every row.
Baseline scores from an immature model (maturity gate not passed, 7 training rounds). Scores rank; they never assert a category.
score_only:v0-immature-baseline · verbatim from the scoring run: score_only means the number may rank works, and no category label ships from itClassification
machine, unvalidatedMachine predicted; a candidate call from one source (direct Gemma or distilled Codex), not a consensus.
How this classification was reached, model by model and score by score, is at the end of the page under "How this classification was reached".