Estimating Welfare Effects in a Non-Parametric Choice Model: The Case of School Vouchers.
We develop new robust discrete choice tools to learn about the average willingness to pay for a price subsidy and its effects on demand given exogenous, discrete variation in prices. Our starting point is a non-parametric, non-separable model of choice. We exploit the insight that our welfare parame...
| Publicado en: | Review of Economic Studies Vol. 93; no. 3; pp. 1963 - 1995 |
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| Autores principales: | , |
| Formato: | Artículo |
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Oxford University Press / USA
May2026
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| Acceso en línea: | Ver este registro en EBSCOhost |
| fields | @attributes: recordID: 1 pdfLink: plink: https://search.ebscohost.com/login.aspx?direct=true&db=ssf&AN=193663112&site=ehost-live header: @attributes: shortDbName: ssf uiTerm: 193663112 longDbName: Social Sciences Full Text (H.W. Wilson) uiTag: AN controlInfo: bkinfo: jinfo: jid: 00346527 REM jtl: Review of Economic Studies issn: 00346527 maglogo: N pubinfo: dt: May2026 vid: 93 iid: 3 pid: 622 pub: Oxford University Press / USA artinfo: ui: 193663112 10.1093/restud/rdaf064 ppf: 1963 ppct: 32 formats: tig: atl: Estimating Welfare Effects in a Non-Parametric Choice Model: The Case of School Vouchers. aug: au: Kamat, Vishal Norris, Samuel affil: School of Economics and Finance, Queen Mary University of London, UK Department of Economics, University of British Columbia, Canada su: Educational vouchers Economic demand Economic impact Discrete choice models Financial aid sug: subj: Educational vouchers Economic demand Economic impact Discrete choice models Financial aid ab: We develop new robust discrete choice tools to learn about the average willingness to pay for a price subsidy and its effects on demand given exogenous, discrete variation in prices. Our starting point is a non-parametric, non-separable model of choice. We exploit the insight that our welfare parameters in this model can be expressed as functions of demand for the different alternatives. However, while the variation in the data reveals the value of demand at the observed prices, the parameters generally depend on its values beyond these prices. We show how to sharply characterize what we can learn when demand is specified to be entirely non-parametric or to be parametrized in a flexible manner, both of which imply that the parameters are not necessarily point identified. We use our tools to analyse the welfare effects of price subsidies provided by school vouchers in the DC Opportunity Scholarship Program. We find that the provision of the status quo voucher and a wide range of counterfactual vouchers of different amounts can have positive and potentially large benefits net of costs. The positive effect can be explained by the popularity of low-tuition schools in the programme; removing them from the programme can result in a negative net benefit. We also find that various standard logit specifications, in comparison, limit attention to demand functions with low demand for the voucher, which do not capture the large magnitudes of benefits credibly consistent with the data. pubtype: Academic Journal doctype: Article src: R language: English refInfo: copyright: @attributes: flag: N holdings: @attributes: islocal: N |
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