The Benefits and Costs of JTPA Title II-A Programs: Key Findings from the National Job Training Partnership Act Study

Bloom, Howard S.; Orr, Larry L.; Bell, Stephen H.; Cave, George; Doolittle, Fred; Lin, Winston T.; Bos, Johannes M.

doi:10.2307/146183

Cited by 200 publications

(141 citation statements)

References 18 publications

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“…It collected background information on the applicants prior to random assignment, as well as administrative and survey data on applicants' earnings in the 30-month period following the assignment. We use the sample of 11,204 adults (22 years and older) used in the original evaluation of the program and in subsequent studies (Bloom et al, 1997, Heckman et al, 1997, Abadie et al, 2002 14 . The probability of being assigned to the treatment was two thirds in this sample.…”

Section: Empirical Applicationmentioning

confidence: 99%

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Who should be treated? Empirical welfare maximization methods for treatment choice

Kitagawa

Tetenov²

2017

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One of the main objectives of empirical analysis of experiments and quasi-experiments is to inform policy decisions that determine the allocation of treatments to individuals with different observable covariates. We study the properties and implementation of the Empirical Welfare Maximization (EWM) method, which estimates a treatment assignment policy by maximizing the sample analog of average social welfare over a class of candidate treatment policies. The EWM approach is attractive in terms of both statistical performance and practical implementation in realistic settings of policy design. Common features of these settings include: (i) feasible treatment assignment rules are constrained exogenously for ethical, legislative, or political reasons, (ii) a policy maker wants a simple treatment assignment rule based on one or more eligibility scores in order to reduce the dimensionality of individual observable characteristics, and/or (iii) the proportion of individuals who can receive the treatment is a priori limited due to a budget or a capacity constraint. We show that when the propensity score is known, the average social welfare attained by EWM rules converges at least at n −1/2 rate to the maximum obtainable welfare uniformly over a minimally constrained class of data distributions, and this uniform convergence rate is minimax optimal. We examine how the uniform convergence rate depends on the richness of the class of candidate decision rules, the distribution of conditional treatment effects, and the lack of knowledge of the propensity score. We offer easily implementable algorithms for computing the EWM rule and an application using experimental data from the National JTPA Study.

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Section: Empirical Applicationmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…The first is the total individual Table 5 in Bloom et al (1997)), which takes into account varying take-up of program services. The first outcome measure reflects social preferences that put no weight on the costs of the program incurred by the government.…”

Section: Empirical Applicationmentioning

confidence: 99%

Who should be treated? Empirical welfare maximization methods for treatment choice

Kitagawa

Tetenov²

2017

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“…6 A detailed description of the study and an assessment of average program effects for five large subgroups of the target population is found in Bloom et al (1997). The study randomized whether applicants were eligible to receive a mix of training, job-search assistance, and other services provided by the JTPA for a period of 18 months.…”

Section: Empirical Illustrationmentioning

confidence: 99%

Equality-minded treatment choice

Kitagawa¹,

Tetenov²

2017

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The goal of many randomized experiments and quasi-experimental studies in economics is to inform policies that aim to raise incomes and reduce economic inequality.A policy maximizing the sum of individual incomes may not be desirable if it magnifies economic inequality and post-treatment redistribution of income is infeasible. This paper develops a method to estimate the optimal treatment assignment policy based on observable individual covariates when the policy objective is to maximize an equality-minded rank-dependent social welfare function, which puts higher weight on individuals with lower-ranked outcomes. We estimate the optimal policy by maximizing a sample analog of the rank-dependent welfare over a properly constrained set of policies. Although an analytical characterization of the optimal policy under a rankdependent social welfare is not available even with the knowledge of potential outcome distributions, we show that the average social welfare attained by our estimated policy converges to the maximal attainable welfare at n −1/2 rate uniformly over a large class of data distributions. We also show that this rate is minimax optimal. We provide an application of our method using the data from the National JTPA Study.

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“…For example, in the case of the JTPA, only 60% of those offered the training actually received it (Bloom et al, 1997). Presumably, those who took the training are those who stood the most to gain from the training.…”

Section: Imbens and Angristmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…For these people, the training may have been of relatively little value. Furthermore, 2% of those who applied for and were not assigned training program wind up receiving the training (Bloom et al, 1997). Angrist, Imbens and Rubin (1996) refer to those who were assigned training, but did not take the training as never-takers.…”

Section: Imbens and Angristmentioning

confidence: 99%

Identification of Models of the Labor Market

French¹,

Taber²

2011

Handbook of Labor Economics

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This chapter discusses identification of common selection models of the labor market.We start with the classic Roy model and show how it can be identified with exclusion restrictions. We then extend the argument to the generalized Roy model, treatment effect models, duration models, search models, and dynamic discrete choice models.In all cases, key ingredients for identification are exclusion restrictions and support conditions.

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The Benefits and Costs of JTPA Title II-A Programs: Key Findings from the National Job Training Partnership Act Study

Cited by 200 publications

References 18 publications

Who should be treated? Empirical welfare maximization methods for treatment choice

Who should be treated? Empirical welfare maximization methods for treatment choice

Equality-minded treatment choice

Identification of Models of the Labor Market

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