Economists have long sought to learn the effect of a "treatment" on some outcome of interest, just as doctors do with their patients. A central practical objective of research on treatment response is to provide decision makers with information useful in choosing treatments. Often the decision maker is a social planner who must choose treatments for a heterogeneous population--for example, a physician choosing medical treatments for diverse patients or a judge choosing sentences for convicted offenders. But research on treatment response rarely provides all the information that planners...
Economists have long sought to learn the effect of a "treatment" on some outcome of interest, just as doctors do with their patients. A central pra...