Difference-in-Differences in the Marketplace

21 Pages Posted: 5 Feb 2024

See all articles by Robert Minton

Robert Minton

Board of Governors of the Federal Reserve System

Casey B. Mulligan

University of Chicago; National Bureau of Economic Research (NBER)

Multiple version iconThere are 3 versions of this paper

Date Written: February 5, 2024

Abstract

Price theory says that the most important effects of policy and technological change are often found beyond their first point of contact. This appears opposed to econometric methods that rule out spillovers of one person’s treatment on another’s outcomes. This paper uses the industry model from price theory to represent the statistical concepts of treatments and controls. When treated and control observations are in the same market, the controls are indirectly affected by the treatment. Moreover, even the effect of the treatment on the treated reveals only part of the consequence for the treated of treating the entire market, which is often the parameter of interest. Marshall’s Laws of Derived Demand provide a guide for empirical work: precise price-theoretic interpretations of the direct and spillover effects of a treatment, the quantitative relationships between them, and how they correspond to the scale and substitution effects emphasized in price theory.

JEL Classification: C21,D41,L11

Suggested Citation

Minton, Robert and Mulligan, Casey B., Difference-in-Differences in the Marketplace (February 5, 2024). University of Chicago, Becker Friedman Institute for Economics Working Paper No. 2024-12, Available at SSRN: https://ssrn.com/abstract=4717189 or http://dx.doi.org/10.2139/ssrn.4717189

Robert Minton

Board of Governors of the Federal Reserve System ( email )

20th Street and Constitution Avenue NW
Washington, DC 20551
United States

Casey B. Mulligan (Contact Author)

University of Chicago ( email )

1126 East 59th Street
Chicago, IL 60637
United States
773-702-9017 (Phone)
773-702-8490 (Fax)

National Bureau of Economic Research (NBER)

1050 Massachusetts Avenue
Cambridge, MA 02138
United States

Do you have a job opening that you would like to promote on SSRN?

Paper statistics

Downloads
51
Abstract Views
217
Rank
639,739
PlumX Metrics