IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/bla/jorssa/v184y2021i1p282-300.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

A double machine learning approach to estimate the effects of musical practice on student’s skills

Author

Listed:
  • Michael C. Knaus

Abstract

This study investigates the dose–response effects of making music on youth development. Identification is based on the conditional independence assumption and estimation is implemented using a recent double machine learning estimator. The study proposes solutions to two highly practically relevant questions that arise for these new methods: (i) How to investigate sensitivity of estimates to tuning parameter choices in the machine learning part? (ii) How to assess covariate balancing in high‐dimensional settings? The results show that improvements in objectively measured cognitive skills require at least medium intensity, while improvements in school grades are already observed for low intensity of practice.

Suggested Citation

  • Michael C. Knaus, 2021. "A double machine learning approach to estimate the effects of musical practice on student’s skills," Journal of the Royal Statistical Society Series A, Royal Statistical Society, vol. 184(1), pages 282-300, January.
    • Handle: RePEc:bla:jorssa:v:184:y:2021:i:1:p:282-300
    DOI: 10.1111/rssa.12623
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: https://doi.org/10.1111/rssa.12623
    Download Restriction: no
    File URL: https://libkey.io/10.1111/rssa.12623?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
    ---><---

    Other versions of this item:

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Felfe, Christina & Lechner, Michael & Steinmayr, Andreas, 2011. "Sport and Child Development," Economics Working Paper Series 1135, University of St. Gallen, School of Economics and Political Science.
    2. A. Smith, Jeffrey & E. Todd, Petra, 2005. "Does matching overcome LaLonde's critique of nonexperimental estimators?," Journal of Econometrics, Elsevier, vol. 125(1-2), pages 305-353.
    3. Victor Chernozhukov & Denis Chetverikov & Mert Demirer & Esther Duflo & Christian Hansen & Whitney Newey & James Robins, 2018. "Double/debiased machine learning for treatment and structural parameters," Econometrics Journal, Royal Economic Society, vol. 21(1), pages 1-68, February.
    4. Hainmueller, Jens, 2012. "Entropy Balancing for Causal Effects: A Multivariate Reweighting Method to Produce Balanced Samples in Observational Studies," Political Analysis, Cambridge University Press, vol. 20(1), pages 25-46, January.
    5. Hille, Adrian & Schupp, Jürgen, 2015. "How learning a musical instrument affects the development of skills," Economics of Education Review, Elsevier, vol. 44(C), pages 56-82.
    6. Cattaneo, Matias D., 2010. "Efficient semiparametric estimation of multi-valued treatment effects under ignorability," Journal of Econometrics, Elsevier, vol. 155(2), pages 138-154, April.
    7. Alexandre Belloni & Victor Chernozhukov & Christian Hansen, 2014. "High-Dimensional Methods and Inference on Structural and Treatment Effects," Journal of Economic Perspectives, American Economic Association, vol. 28(2), pages 29-50, Spring.
    8. Leeb, Hannes & Potscher, Benedikt M., 2008. "Sparse estimators and the oracle property, or the return of Hodges' estimator," Journal of Econometrics, Elsevier, vol. 142(1), pages 201-211, January.
    9. Keisuke Hirano & Guido W. Imbens & Geert Ridder, 2003. "Efficient Estimation of Average Treatment Effects Using the Estimated Propensity Score," Econometrica, Econometric Society, vol. 71(4), pages 1161-1189, July.
    10. Alberto Abadie & Alexis Diamond & Jens Hainmueller, 2015. "Comparative Politics and the Synthetic Control Method," American Journal of Political Science, John Wiley & Sons, vol. 59(2), pages 495-510, February.
    11. Leeb, Hannes & Pötscher, Benedikt M., 2005. "Model Selection And Inference: Facts And Fiction," Econometric Theory, Cambridge University Press, vol. 21(1), pages 21-59, February.
    12. Farrell, Max H., 2015. "Robust inference on average treatment effects with possibly more covariates than observations," Journal of Econometrics, Elsevier, vol. 189(1), pages 1-23.
    13. Bryan S. Graham & Cristine Campos de Xavier Pinto & Daniel Egel, 2016. "Efficient Estimation of Data Combination Models by the Method of Auxiliary-to-Study Tilting (AST)," Journal of Business & Economic Statistics, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 34(2), pages 288-301, April.
    14. Bryan S. Graham & Cristine Campos De Xavier Pinto & Daniel Egel, 2012. "Inverse Probability Tilting for Moment Condition Models with Missing Data," The Review of Economic Studies, Review of Economic Studies Ltd, vol. 79(3), pages 1053-1079.
    15. Rajeev H. Dehejia & Sadek Wahba, 2002. "Propensity Score-Matching Methods For Nonexperimental Causal Studies," The Review of Economics and Statistics, MIT Press, vol. 84(1), pages 151-161, February.
    16. Stefan Wager & Susan Athey, 2018. "Estimation and Inference of Heterogeneous Treatment Effects using Random Forests," Journal of the American Statistical Association, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 113(523), pages 1228-1242, July.
    17. Michael Lechner & Anthony Strittmatter, 2019. "Practical procedures to deal with common support problems in matching estimation," Econometric Reviews, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 38(2), pages 193-207, February.
    18. Alexandre Belloni & Victor Chernozhukov & Christian Hansen, 2014. "Inference on Treatment Effects after Selection among High-Dimensional Controlsâ€," The Review of Economic Studies, Review of Economic Studies Ltd, vol. 81(2), pages 608-650.
    19. Jinyong Hahn, 1998. "On the Role of the Propensity Score in Efficient Semiparametric Estimation of Average Treatment Effects," Econometrica, Econometric Society, vol. 66(2), pages 315-332, March.
    20. Guido W. Imbens & Jeffrey M. Wooldridge, 2009. "Recent Developments in the Econometrics of Program Evaluation," Journal of Economic Literature, American Economic Association, vol. 47(1), pages 5-86, March.
    21. Denis Chetverikov & . ., 2016. "On cross-validated Lasso," CeMMAP working papers CWP47/16, Centre for Microdata Methods and Practice, Institute for Fiscal Studies.
    22. Matias D. Cattaneo, 2010. "multi-valued treatment effects," The New Palgrave Dictionary of Economics,, Palgrave Macmillan.
    23. Susan Athey, 2018. "The Impact of Machine Learning on Economics," NBER Chapters, in: The Economics of Artificial Intelligence: An Agenda, pages 507-547, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    24. Jonathan M.V. Davis & Sara B. Heller, 2017. "Using Causal Forests to Predict Treatment Heterogeneity: An Application to Summer Jobs," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 107(5), pages 546-550, May.
    25. Wang-Sheng Lee, 2013. "Propensity score matching and variations on the balancing test," Empirical Economics, Springer, vol. 44(1), pages 47-80, February.
    26. Lu B. & Zanutto E. & Hornik R. & Rosenbaum P.R., 2001. "Matching With Doses in an Observational Study of a Media Campaign Against Drug Abuse," Journal of the American Statistical Association, American Statistical Association, vol. 96, pages 1245-1253, December.
    27. Victor Chernozhukov & Chris Hansen & Martin Spindler, 2016. "High-Dimensional Metrics in R," Papers 1603.01700, arXiv.org, revised Aug 2016.
    28. A. Belloni & V. Chernozhukov & I. Fernández‐Val & C. Hansen, 2017. "Program Evaluation and Causal Inference With High‐Dimensional Data," Econometrica, Econometric Society, vol. 85, pages 233-298, January.
    29. Shu Yang & Guido W. Imbens & Zhanglin Cui & Douglas E. Faries & Zbigniew Kadziola, 2016. "Propensity score matching and subclassification in observational studies with multi‐level treatments," Biometrics, The International Biometric Society, vol. 72(4), pages 1055-1065, December.
    30. Lechner, Michael & Hille, Adrian & Cabane, Charlotte, 2015. "Mozart or Pelé? The effects of teenagers? participation in music and sports," CEPR Discussion Papers 10556, C.E.P.R. Discussion Papers.
    31. Li, Gaorong & Lian, Heng & Feng, Sanying & Zhu, Lixing, 2013. "Automatic variable selection for longitudinal generalized linear models," Computational Statistics & Data Analysis, Elsevier, vol. 61(C), pages 174-186.
    32. Lechner, Michael, 2008. "A note on endogenous control variables in causal studies," Statistics & Probability Letters, Elsevier, vol. 78(2), pages 190-195, February.
    33. Susan Athey & Guido W. Imbens & Stefan Wager, 2018. "Approximate residual balancing: debiased inference of average treatment effects in high dimensions," Journal of the Royal Statistical Society Series B, Royal Statistical Society, vol. 80(4), pages 597-623, September.
    34. Huber, Martin & Lechner, Michael & Wunsch, Conny, 2013. "The performance of estimators based on the propensity score," Journal of Econometrics, Elsevier, vol. 175(1), pages 1-21.
    35. Athey, Susan & Wager, Stefan, 2017. "Efficient Policy Learning," Research Papers 3506, Stanford University, Graduate School of Business.
    36. Cabane, Charlotte & Hille, Adrian & Lechner, Michael, 2016. "Mozart or Pelé? The effects of adolescents' participation in music and sports," Labour Economics, Elsevier, vol. 41(C), pages 90-103.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Citations

    Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
    as


    Cited by:

    1. Huber, Martin & Meier, Jonas & Wallimann, Hannes, 2022. "Business analytics meets artificial intelligence: Assessing the demand effects of discounts on Swiss train tickets," Transportation Research Part B: Methodological, Elsevier, vol. 163(C), pages 22-39.
    2. Rolando Gonzales Martinez, 2021. "How good is good? Probabilistic benchmarks and nanofinance+," Papers 2103.01669, arXiv.org.
    3. Jeffrey Smith, 2022. "Treatment Effect Heterogeneity," Evaluation Review, , vol. 46(5), pages 652-677, October.
    4. Michael Lechner & Jana Mareckova, 2024. "Comprehensive Causal Machine Learning," Papers 2405.10198, arXiv.org.
    5. Michael C Knaus, 2022. "Double machine learning-based programme evaluation under unconfoundedness [Econometric methods for program evaluation]," The Econometrics Journal, Royal Economic Society, vol. 25(3), pages 602-627.
    6. Luyuan Song & Xiaojun Zhang, 2024. "Estimating the Individual Treatment Effect with Different Treatment Group Sizes," Mathematics, MDPI, vol. 12(8), pages 1-17, April.
    7. Oyenubi, Adeola & Kollamparambil, Umakrishnan, 2023. "Does noncompliance with COVID-19 regulations impact the depressive symptoms of others?," Economic Modelling, Elsevier, vol. 120(C).
    8. Philipp Bach & Victor Chernozhukov & Malte S. Kurz & Martin Spindler & Sven Klaassen, 2021. "DoubleML -- An Object-Oriented Implementation of Double Machine Learning in R," Papers 2103.09603, arXiv.org, revised Jun 2024.
    9. McNamara, Sarah, 2020. "Returns to higher education and dropouts: A double machine learning approach," ZEW Discussion Papers 20-084, ZEW - Leibniz Centre for European Economic Research.
    10. Jonathan Fuhr & Philipp Berens & Dominik Papies, 2024. "Estimating Causal Effects with Double Machine Learning -- A Method Evaluation," Papers 2403.14385, arXiv.org, revised Apr 2024.
    11. Wang, Xiqian & Bian, Yong & Zhang, Qin, 2023. "The effect of cooking fuel choice on the elderly’s well-being: Evidence from two non-parametric methods," Energy Economics, Elsevier, vol. 125(C).

    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. Michael C Knaus & Michael Lechner & Anthony Strittmatter, 2021. "Machine learning estimation of heterogeneous causal effects: Empirical Monte Carlo evidence," The Econometrics Journal, Royal Economic Society, vol. 24(1), pages 134-161.
    2. Huber, Martin, 2019. "An introduction to flexible methods for policy evaluation," FSES Working Papers 504, Faculty of Economics and Social Sciences, University of Freiburg/Fribourg Switzerland.
    3. Ganesh Karapakula, 2023. "Stable Probability Weighting: Large-Sample and Finite-Sample Estimation and Inference Methods for Heterogeneous Causal Effects of Multivalued Treatments Under Limited Overlap," Papers 2301.05703, arXiv.org, revised Jan 2023.
    4. Sant’Anna, Pedro H.C. & Zhao, Jun, 2020. "Doubly robust difference-in-differences estimators," Journal of Econometrics, Elsevier, vol. 219(1), pages 101-122.
    5. Frölich, Markus & Huber, Martin & Wiesenfarth, Manuel, 2017. "The finite sample performance of semi- and non-parametric estimators for treatment effects and policy evaluation," Computational Statistics & Data Analysis, Elsevier, vol. 115(C), pages 91-102.
    6. Michael Lechner & Jana Mareckova, 2024. "Comprehensive Causal Machine Learning," Papers 2405.10198, arXiv.org.
    7. Chunrong Ai & Oliver Linton & Kaiji Motegi & Zheng Zhang, 2021. "A unified framework for efficient estimation of general treatment models," Quantitative Economics, Econometric Society, vol. 12(3), pages 779-816, July.
    8. Farrell, Max H., 2015. "Robust inference on average treatment effects with possibly more covariates than observations," Journal of Econometrics, Elsevier, vol. 189(1), pages 1-23.
    9. Athey, Susan & Imbens, Guido W. & Metzger, Jonas & Munro, Evan, 2024. "Using Wasserstein Generative Adversarial Networks for the design of Monte Carlo simulations," Journal of Econometrics, Elsevier, vol. 240(2).
    10. Sant’Anna, Pedro H.C. & Song, Xiaojun, 2019. "Specification tests for the propensity score," Journal of Econometrics, Elsevier, vol. 210(2), pages 379-404.
    11. Michael C Knaus, 2022. "Double machine learning-based programme evaluation under unconfoundedness [Econometric methods for program evaluation]," The Econometrics Journal, Royal Economic Society, vol. 25(3), pages 602-627.
    12. Arun Advani & Toru Kitagawa & Tymon Słoczyński, 2019. "Mostly harmless simulations? Using Monte Carlo studies for estimator selection," Journal of Applied Econometrics, John Wiley & Sons, Ltd., vol. 34(6), pages 893-910, September.
    13. Su, Liangjun & Ura, Takuya & Zhang, Yichong, 2019. "Non-separable models with high-dimensional data," Journal of Econometrics, Elsevier, vol. 212(2), pages 646-677.
    14. Max H. Farrell & Tengyuan Liang & Sanjog Misra, 2021. "Deep Neural Networks for Estimation and Inference," Econometrica, Econometric Society, vol. 89(1), pages 181-213, January.
    15. Lee, Ying-Ying, 2018. "Efficient propensity score regression estimators of multivalued treatment effects for the treated," Journal of Econometrics, Elsevier, vol. 204(2), pages 207-222.
    16. 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.
    17. Advani, Arun & Sloczynski, Tymon, 2013. "Mostly Harmless Simulations? On the Internal Validity of Empirical Monte Carlo Studies," IZA Discussion Papers 7874, Institute of Labor Economics (IZA).
    18. Sasaki, Yuya & Ura, Takuya, 2023. "Estimation and inference for policy relevant treatment effects," Journal of Econometrics, Elsevier, vol. 234(2), pages 394-450.
    19. Hugo Bodory & Lorenzo Camponovo & Martin Huber & Michael Lechner, 2020. "The Finite Sample Performance of Inference Methods for Propensity Score Matching and Weighting Estimators," Journal of Business & Economic Statistics, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 38(1), pages 183-200, January.
    20. Victor Chernozhukov & Juan Carlos Escanciano & Hidehiko Ichimura & Whitney K. Newey & James M. Robins, 2022. "Locally Robust Semiparametric Estimation," Econometrica, Econometric Society, vol. 90(4), pages 1501-1535, July.

    More about this item

    JEL classification:

    • J24 - Labor and Demographic Economics - - Demand and Supply of Labor - - - Human Capital; Skills; Occupational Choice; Labor Productivity
    • Z11 - Other Special Topics - - Cultural Economics - - - Economics of the Arts and Literature
    • C21 - Mathematical and Quantitative Methods - - Single Equation Models; Single Variables - - - Cross-Sectional Models; Spatial Models; Treatment Effect Models
    • C31 - Mathematical and Quantitative Methods - - Multiple or Simultaneous Equation Models; Multiple Variables - - - Cross-Sectional Models; Spatial Models; Treatment Effect Models; Quantile Regressions; Social Interaction Models

    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:bla:jorssa:v:184:y:2021:i:1:p:282-300. 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: Wiley Content Delivery (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://edirc.repec.org/data/rssssea.html .

    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.