Nonlinear Difference-in-Differences in Repeated Cross Sections with Continuous Treatments

Abstract

This paper studies the identification of nonseparable models with continuous, endogenous regressors, also called treatments, using repeated cross sections. We show that several treatment effect parameters are identified under two assumptions on the effect of time, namely a weak stationarity condition on the distribution of unobservables, and time variation in the distribution of endogenous regressors. Other treatment effect parameters are set identified under curvature conditions, but without any functional form restrictions. This result is related to the difference-in-differences idea, but does neither impose additive time effects nor exogenously defined control groups. Furthermore, we investigate two extrapolation strategies that allow us to point identify the entire model: using monotonicity of the error term, or imposing a linear correlated random coefficient structure. Finally, we illustrate our results by studying the effect of mother's age on infants' birth weight.

Keywords