Hi Workshop Community,
A reminder that our first session will be* tomorrow*, where Anja Sautmann
will present co-athored work with Maximilian Kasy on "*Adaptive treatment
assignment in experiments for policy choice*". The paper is attached.
*Where:* CGIS Knafel Building, Room K354 (see this link
<https://map.harvard.edu/?bld=04471&level=9> for directions).
*When: *Wednesday, September 4th at 12 noon - 1:30 pm.
All are welcome! Lunch will be provided.
*Abstract*: *The goal of many experiments is to inform the choice between
different policies. However, standard experimental designs are geared
toward point estimation and hypothesis testing. We consider the problem of
treatment assignment in an experiment with several non-overlapping waves,
where the goal is to choose among a set of possible policies (treatments)
for large-scale implementation. The optimal experimental design learns from
earlier waves and assigns more experimental units to the better-performing
treatments in later waves. We propose a computationally tractable
approximation of the optimal design that we call “exploration sampling,”
where assignment probabilities are an increasing concave function of the
posterior probabilities that each treatment is optimal. Theoretical results
and calibrated simulations demonstrate improvements in welfare, relative to
both non-adaptive designs as well as bandit algorithms. An application to
selecting between different recruitment strategies for an agricultural
extension service in Odisha, India demonstrates practical feasibility.*
Looking forward to seeing you all there,
Georgie
(Note: the Fall schedule for Gov 3009 can be viewed here
<https://projects.iq.harvard.edu/applied.stats.workshop-gov3009>)
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