Motivating Applications
Raj Chetty, Harvard University and NBER

Mediation Analysis: Identifying Mechanisms Underlying Treatment
Effects on Primary Outcomes
Kosuke Imai, Harvard University

Surrogate Indices: Identifying Treatment Effects on Primary
Outcomes Using Mediators
Raj Chetty, Harvard University and NBER
Slides

Background materials on mediation

Imai, Kosuke, Dustin Tingley, and Teppei Yamamoto. (2013). “Experimental Designs for Identifying Causal Mechanisms.'' Journal of the Royal Statistical Society, Series A, Vol. 176, No. 1 (January), pp. 5-51.

Imai, Kosuke, Luke Keele, and Teppei Yamamoto. (2010). “Identification, Inference, and Sensitivity Analysis for Causal Mediation Effects.'' Statistical Science, Vol. 25, No. 1 (February), pp. 51-71.

Huber, Martin. Mediation Analysis. Handbook of Labor, Human Resources and Population Economics  1-38, 2020. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-57365-6_162-2 

Background materials on surrogate indices

Susan Athey, Raj Chetty, Guido W. Imbens & Hyunseung Kang. “The Surrogate Index: Combining Short-Term Proxies to Estimate Long-Term Treatment Effects More Rapidly and Precisely.” (NBER Working Paper 26463) forthcoming Review of Economic Studies. 

Susan Athey, Raj Chetty, Guido W. Imbens. (2025). “The Experimental Selection Correction Estimator: Using Experiments to Remove Biases in Observational Estimates.” (NBER Working Paper 33817)

Rambachan, Ashesh, Rahul Singh, Davide Viviano (2024). “Program Evaluation with Remotely Sensed Outcomes.” arXiv preprint arXiv:2411:10959

Supported by the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation grant #G-2023-19633, the Lynde and Harry Bradley Foundation grant #20251294 , and the National Science Foundation grant #2314841