LATE for History

Abstract

In Historical Economics, Persistence studies document the persistence of some historical phenomenon or leverage this persistence to identify causal relationships of interest in the present. In this chapter, we analyze the implications of allowing for heterogeneous treatment effects in these studies. We delineate their common empirical structure, argue that heterogeneous treatment effects are likely in their context, and propose minimal abstract models that help interpret results and guide the development of empirical strategies to uncover the mechanisms generating the effects.

JUE Insight: How much does COVID-19 increase with mobility? Evidence from New York and four other U.S. cities

“…(2020) , Fajgelbaum et al. (2020) , Bisin and Moro (2020) and Cuñat and Zymek (2020) . A third line of work has examined how agents’ behavioral responses (e.g.…”

JUE Insight: The geography of pandemic containment

“…A few papers in this literature have, like ours, analyzed the spatial dimension of the COVID-19 crisis, studying several economic and policy implications of the spread of the disease across space. Among others, we highlight Antràs, Redding, Rossi-Hansberg, 2020 , Argente, Hsieh, Lee, 2020 , Bisin, Moro, 2020 , Cuat, Zymek, 2020 and Fajgelbaum et al. 2020 .…”