IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/sae/evarev/v49y2025i6p1000-1020.html

External Validity in an Instrumental Variable Setting

Author

Listed:
  • Alexander Kwon
  • Kyungtae Lee

Abstract

We study the external validity of instrumental variable estimation. The key assumption we impose for external validity is conditional external unconfoundedness among compliers, which means that the treatment effect and target selection are independent among compliers conditional on covariates. We study this assumption with a case study about the impact of solid-fuel usage on women’s average cooking time. Among the six countries examined, we find no statistical evidence that the assumptions required for external validity are violated for four countries (Ethiopia, Honduras, Kenya, and Zambia), but in Cambodia and Nepal, we find low external validity. These results provide suggestive evidence that the assumptions required for external validity are violated for these two countries.

Suggested Citation

  • Alexander Kwon & Kyungtae Lee, 2025. "External Validity in an Instrumental Variable Setting," Evaluation Review, , vol. 49(6), pages 1000-1020, December.
    • Handle: RePEc:sae:evarev:v:49:y:2025:i:6:p:1000-1020
    DOI: 10.1177/0193841X251342619
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1177/0193841X251342619
    Download Restriction: no
    File URL: https://libkey.io/10.1177/0193841X251342619?utm_source=ideas
    LibKey link: if access is restricted and if your library uses this service, LibKey will redirect you to where you can use your library subscription to access this item
    ---><---

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Joshua D. Angrist & Jörn-Steffen Pischke, 2010. "The Credibility Revolution in Empirical Economics: How Better Research Design Is Taking the Con out of Econometrics," Journal of Economic Perspectives, American Economic Association, vol. 24(2), pages 3-30, Spring.
    2. Richard K. Crump & V. Joseph Hotz & Guido W. Imbens & Oscar A. Mitnik, 2009. "Dealing with limited overlap in estimation of average treatment effects," Biometrika, Biometrika Trust, vol. 96(1), pages 187-199.
    3. Augustin Bergeron & Gabriel Tourek & Jonathan L. Weigel, 2024. "The State Capacity Ceiling on Tax Rates: Evidence From Randomized Tax Abatements in the DRC," Econometrica, Econometric Society, vol. 92(4), pages 1163-1193, July.
    4. Hunt Allcott, 2015. "Site Selection Bias in Program Evaluation," The Quarterly Journal of Economics, President and Fellows of Harvard College, vol. 130(3), pages 1117-1165.
    5. Torsten Persson & Guido Tabellini, 2009. "Democratic Capital: The Nexus of Political and Economic Change," American Economic Journal: Macroeconomics, American Economic Association, vol. 1(2), pages 88-126, July.
    6. Farzana Afridi & Sisir Debnath & Taryn Dinkelman & Komal Sareen, 2023. "Time for Clean Energy? Cleaner Fuels and Women’s Time in Home Production," The World Bank Economic Review, World Bank, vol. 37(2), pages 283-304.
    7. Verma, Anjali P. & Imelda, Imelda, 2019. "Clean Energy Access : Gender Disparity, Health, and Labor Supply," UC3M Working papers. Economics 29397, Universidad Carlos III de Madrid. Departamento de Economía.
    8. Joshua D. Angrist & Jörn-Steffen Pischke, 2009. "Mostly Harmless Econometrics: An Empiricist's Companion," Economics Books, Princeton University Press, edition 1, number 8769, December.
    9. Abadie, Alberto, 2003. "Semiparametric instrumental variable estimation of treatment response models," Journal of Econometrics, Elsevier, vol. 113(2), pages 231-263, April.
    10. Marinho Bertanha & Guido W. Imbens, 2020. "External Validity in Fuzzy Regression Discontinuity Designs," Journal of Business & Economic Statistics, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 38(3), pages 593-612, July.
    11. Joseph Hotz, V. & Imbens, Guido W. & Mortimer, Julie H., 2005. "Predicting the efficacy of future training programs using past experiences at other locations," Journal of Econometrics, Elsevier, vol. 125(1-2), pages 241-270.
    12. Guido W. Imbens, 2010. "Better LATE Than Nothing: Some Comments on Deaton (2009) and Heckman and Urzua (2009)," Journal of Economic Literature, American Economic Association, vol. 48(2), pages 399-423, June.
    13. Shahidur R. Khandker & Hussain A. Samad & Rubaba Ali & Douglas F. Barnes, 2014. "Who Benefits Most from Rural Electrification? Evidence in India," The Energy Journal, , vol. 35(2), pages 75-96, April.
    14. Yokoo, Hide-Fumi & Arimura, Toshi H. & Chattopadhyay, Mriduchhanda & Katayama, Hajime, 2023. "Subjective risk belief function in the field: Evidence from cooking fuel choices and health in India," Journal of Development Economics, Elsevier, vol. 161(C).
    15. repec:aen:journl:ej35-2-04 is not listed on IDEAS
    16. Joshua Angrist & Ivan Fernandez-Val, 2010. "ExtrapoLATE-ing: External Validity and Overidentification in the LATE Framework," NBER Working Papers 16566, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    17. Krishnapriya, P.P. & Chandrasekaran, Maya & Jeuland, Marc & Pattanayak, Subhrendu K., 2021. "Do improved cookstoves save time and improve gender outcomes? Evidence from six developing countries," Energy Economics, Elsevier, vol. 102(C).
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Most related items

    These are the items that most often cite the same works as this one and are cited by the same works as this one.
    1. Denis Fougère & Nicolas Jacquemet, 2020. "Policy Evaluation Using Causal Inference Methods," Sciences Po Economics Publications (main) hal-03455978, HAL.
    2. Susan Athey & Guido W. Imbens, 2017. "The State of Applied Econometrics: Causality and Policy Evaluation," Journal of Economic Perspectives, American Economic Association, vol. 31(2), pages 3-32, Spring.
    3. Martin Huber, 2019. "An introduction to flexible methods for policy evaluation," Papers 1910.00641, arXiv.org.
    4. Hunt Allcott, 2012. "Site Selection Bias in Program Evaluation," NBER Working Papers 18373, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    5. Black, Dan A. & Joo, Joonhwi & LaLonde, Robert & Smith, Jeffrey A. & Taylor, Evan J., 2022. "Simple Tests for Selection: Learning More from Instrumental Variables," Labour Economics, Elsevier, vol. 79(C).
    6. Gian Paolo Barbetta & Paolo Canino & Stefano Cima, 2019. "Let’s tweet again? The impact of social networks on literature achievement in high school students: Evidence from a randomized controlled trial," DISCE - Working Papers del Dipartimento di Economia e Finanza def081, Università Cattolica del Sacro Cuore, Dipartimenti e Istituti di Scienze Economiche (DISCE).
    7. Tarek Azzam & Michael Bates & David Fairris, 2019. "Do Learning Communities Increase First Year College Retention? Testing Sample Selection and External Validity of Randomized Control Trials," Working Papers 202002, University of California at Riverside, Department of Economics.
    8. Jeffrey Smith & Arthur Sweetman, 2016. "Viewpoint: Estimating the causal effects of policies and programs," Canadian Journal of Economics, Canadian Economics Association, vol. 49(3), pages 871-905, August.
    9. Huber, Martin & Wüthrich, Kaspar, 2017. "Evaluating local average and quantile treatment effects under endogeneity based on instruments: a review," FSES Working Papers 479, Faculty of Economics and Social Sciences, University of Freiburg/Fribourg Switzerland.
    10. Lechner, Michael, 2013. "Treatment effects and panel data," Economics Working Paper Series 1314, University of St. Gallen, School of Economics and Political Science.
    11. repec:osf:osfxxx:nwp8k_v1 is not listed on IDEAS
    12. Su, Qinghe & Azam, Mehtabul, 2023. "Does access to liquefied petroleum gas (LPG) reduce the household burden of women? Evidence from India," Energy Economics, Elsevier, vol. 119(C).
    13. Benjamin Lu & Eli Ben-Michael & Avi Feller & Luke Miratrix, 2023. "Is It Who You Are or Where You Are? Accounting for Compositional Differences in Cross-Site Treatment Effect Variation," Journal of Educational and Behavioral Statistics, , vol. 48(4), pages 420-453, August.
    14. Huber Martin & Wüthrich Kaspar, 2019. "Local Average and Quantile Treatment Effects Under Endogeneity: A Review," Journal of Econometric Methods, De Gruyter, vol. 8(1), pages 1-27, January.
    15. Zhu, Lin & Sheng, Yu & Liao, Hua & Blaschke, Maximilian J., 2025. "Enhancing clean cooking energy transition through living facility improvements: Experience from China," Energy Economics, Elsevier, vol. 144(C).
    16. Peter Hull & Michal Kolesár & Christopher Walters, 2022. "Labor by design: contributions of David Card, Joshua Angrist, and Guido Imbens," Scandinavian Journal of Economics, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 124(3), pages 603-645, July.
    17. Aditya Ghosh & Dominik Rothenhausler, 2025. "Which Covariates to Adjust for? Specification-robust Causal Inference in Observational Studies," Papers 2505.08729, arXiv.org, revised Mar 2026.
    18. Schaubert, Marianna, 2018. "Behavioral Response of Non-Resident Parents to Child Support Obligations: Evidence From SOEP," EconStor Preprints 203675, ZBW - Leibniz Information Centre for Economics.
    19. Schaubert, Marianna, 2022. "Do courts know how to incentivize? Behavioral response of non-resident parents to child support obligations," Children and Youth Services Review, Elsevier, vol. 137(C).
    20. Tom Boot & Didier Nibbering, 2024. "Inference on LATEs with covariates," Papers 2402.12607, arXiv.org, revised Nov 2024.
    21. P. Dorian Owen, 2017. "Evaluating Ingenious Instruments for Fundamental Determinants of Long-Run Economic Growth and Development," Econometrics, MDPI, vol. 5(3), pages 1-33, September.

    More about this item

    Keywords

    ;
    ;
    ;
    ;
    ;
    ;
    ;

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:sae:evarev:v:49:y:2025:i:6:p:1000-1020. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    If CitEc recognized a bibliographic reference but did not link an item in RePEc to it, you can help with this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: SAGE Publications (email available below). General contact details of provider: .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.