Treatment effects and panel data

It is a major achievement of the econometric treatment effect literature to clarify under which conditions causal effects are non-parametrically identified. The first part of this chapter focuses on the static treatment model. In this part, I show how panel data can be used to improve the credibility of matching and instrumental variable estimators. In practice, these gains come mainly from the availability of outcome variables measured prior to treatment. Such outcome variables also foster the use of alternative identification strategies, in particular so-called difference-in-difference estimation. In addition to improving the credibility of static causal models, panel data may allow credibly estimating dynamic causal models, which is the main theme of the second part of this chapter.