Working Papers

WP 2025-02 Causal Inferences Over Unobservables

Posted On April 1, 2025
Categories Working Papers, WP 2025

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AUTHORS: Glenn W. Harrison

ABSTRACT: Causal inference in economics involves inference about unobserved, latent relationships between variables, even when based on evidence from controlled experiments. In economics, most of the interesting structure defining causal hypotheses also reference unobserved, latent variables, and thought experiments defining and using those variables. One type… more »

WP 2024-05 Programs of Study and Earnings Dynamics

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Published in June 2024 in Labour Economics, Vol. 88.

AUTHORS: Philippe d'Astous and Stephen Shore

ABSTRACT: University programs differ in the subsequent earnings processes of their enrollees, including many features that students might care about to differing degrees such as the level of average earnings, earnings growth, and volatility. Do the… more »

WP 2024-04 Human Capital Risk and Portfolio Choices: Evidence from University Admission Discontinuities

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Published in April 2024 in Journal of Financial Economics, Vol. 154.

AUTHORS: Philippe d'Astous and Stephen Shore

ABSTRACT: Theory suggests that increasing idiosyncratic, uninsurable labor income risk may cause individuals to reduce the risk in their financial assets. This relationship is confounded empirically by the tendency of risk tolerant people to… more »

WP 2024-02 On The Convergence of Discrete-Time Stationary Regular Multivariate Markov Chains

Posted On February 26, 2024
Categories Working Papers, WP 2024

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AUTHORS: Wynn C. Stirling and Don Ross

ABSTRACT: This paper extends stationary Markov chain convergence theory to model discrete-time regular multivariate Markov chains with joint-conditioning transition probability functions that condition the future state of each process on the present states of all processes considered jointly. This result is a formal… more »

WP 2024-01 Risk Preferences and Risk Perceptions in Insurance Experiments: Some Methodological Challenges

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Forthcoming, The Geneva Risk and Insurance Review

AUTHORS: Glenn W. Harrison

ABSTRACT: The ability to run experiments, or to see natural data as a quasi-experiment, does not free one from the need for theory when evaluating insurance behavior. Theory can be used to motivate the experimental design, evaluate latent effects… more »

WP 2023-06 The End of Behavioral Insurance

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Forthcoming, Georges Dionne (ed.) Handbook of Insurance (New York: Springer, 2024, Third Edition)

AUTHORS: Glenn W. Harrison

ABSTRACT: Our descriptive understanding of observed insurance behavior has been enhanced by considering alternative modeling approaches, and promises to do the same to our normative evaluation of that behavior. Those alternatives come from… more »