Dynamic Discrete Choice and Dynamic Treatment Effects

James J. Heckman, Salvador Navarro

NBER Technical Working Paper No. 316
Issued in October 2005
NBER Program(s):   TWP

This paper considers semiparametric identification of structural dynamic discrete choice models and models for dynamic treatment effects. Time to treatment and counterfactual outcomes associated with treatment times are jointly analyzed. We examine the implicit assumptions of the dynamic treatment model using the structural model as a benchmark. For the structural model we show the gains from using cross equation restrictions connecting choices to associated measurements and outcomes. In the dynamic discrete choice model, we identify both subjective and objective outcomes, distinguishing ex post and ex ante outcomes. We show how to identify agent information sets.

(810 K)

This paper is available as PDF (810 K) or via email.

Machine-readable bibliographic record - MARC, RIS, BibTeX