Behavioral Feedback: Do Individual Choices Influence Scientific Results? / Emily Oster.

Format:

Book

Author/Creator:

Oster, Emily.

Contributor:

National Bureau of Economic Research.

Series:

Working Paper Series (National Bureau of Economic Research) no. w25225.

NBER working paper series no. w25225

Language:

English

Physical Description:

1 online resource: illustrations (black and white);

Other Title:

Behavioral Feedback

Place of Publication:

Cambridge, Mass. National Bureau of Economic Research 2018.

Summary:

In many health domains, we are concerned that observed links - for example, between "healthy" behaviors and good outcomes - are driven by selection into behavior. This paper considers the additional factor that these selection patterns may vary over time. When a particular health behavior becomes more recommended, the take-up of the behavior may be larger among people with other positive health behaviors. Such changes in selection would make it even more difficult to learn about causal effects. I formalize this change in selection in a simple model. I test for evidence of these patterns in the context of diet and vitamin supplementation. Using both microdata and evidence from published results I show that selection varies over time with recommendations about behavior and that estimates of the relationship between health outcomes and health behaviors vary over time in the same way. I show that adjustment for selection on observables is insufficient to address the bias. I suggest a possible robustness approach relying on assumptions about proportional selection of observed and unobserved variables.

Notes:

Print version record

November 2018.