cemmap Masterclass: Planning under ambiguity
Tutor: Charles F. Manski (Northwestern)
19 - 20 March 2009, London
Economists have long sought to learn the effect of a "treatment" on some
outcome of interest, just as doctors do with their patients. A central
practical objective of research on treatment response is to provide
decision makers with information useful in choosing treatments. Often
the decision maker is a social planner who must choose treatments for a
heterogeneous population--for example, a physician choosing medical
treatments for diverse patients or a judge choosing sentences for
convicted offenders. But research on treatment response rarely provides
all the information that planners would like to have. How then should
planners use the available evidence to choose treatments?
These lectures address key aspects of this broad question, exploring and
partially resolving pervasive problems of identification and statistical
inference that arise when studying treatment response and making
treatment choices. Manski addresses the treatment-choice problem
directly using Abraham Wald's statistical decision theory, taking into
account the ambiguity that arises from identification problems and
statistical imprecision under weak but justifiable assumptions.
For a programme and booking details please see the cemmap website:
http://www.cemmap.ac.uk/masterclasses.php?event_id=346
Best wishes
Bonnie
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