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Baseline, Placebo, and Treatment: Efficient Estimation for Three-Group Experiments

Author

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  • Gerber, Alan S.
  • Green, Donald P.
  • Kaplan, Edward H.
  • Kern, Holger L.

Abstract

Randomized experiments commonly compare subjects receiving a treatment to subjects receiving a placebo. An alternative design, frequently used in field experimentation, compares subjects assigned to an untreated baseline group to subjects assigned to a treatment group, adjusting statistically for the fact that some members of the treatment group may fail to receive the treatment. This article shows the potential advantages of a three-group design (baseline, placebo, and treatment). We present a maximum likelihood estimator of the treatment effect for this three-group design and illustrate its use with a field experiment that gauges the effect of prerecorded phone calls on voter turnout. The three-group design offers efficiency advantages over two-group designs while at the same time guarding against unanticipated placebo effects (which would undermine the placebo-treatment comparison) and unexpectedly low rates of compliance with the treatment assignment (which would undermine the baseline-treatment comparison).

Suggested Citation

  • Gerber, Alan S. & Green, Donald P. & Kaplan, Edward H. & Kern, Holger L., 2010. "Baseline, Placebo, and Treatment: Efficient Estimation for Three-Group Experiments," Political Analysis, Cambridge University Press, vol. 18(3), pages 297-315, July.
    • Handle: RePEc:cup:polals:v:18:y:2010:i:03:p:297-315_01
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    Cited by:

    1. Kling, Daniel & Stratmann, Thomas, 2020. "Repeated treatment in a GOTV field experiment: Distinguishing between intensive and extensive margin effects," Journal of Economic Behavior & Organization, Elsevier, vol. 175(C), pages 413-422.
    2. Daniel Kling & Thomas Stratmann, 2016. "The Efficacy of Political Advertising: A Voter Participation Field Experiment with Multiple Robo Calls and Controls for Selection Effects," CESifo Working Paper Series 6195, CESifo.
    3. Florian Foos & Eline A. de Rooij, 2017. "All in the Family: Partisan Disagreement and Electoral Mobilization in Intimate Networks—A Spillover Experiment," American Journal of Political Science, John Wiley & Sons, vol. 61(2), pages 289-304, April.
    4. Anna M. Wilke & Donald P. Green & Jasper Cooper, 2020. "A placebo design to detect spillovers from an education–entertainment experiment in Uganda," Journal of the Royal Statistical Society Series A, Royal Statistical Society, vol. 183(3), pages 1075-1096, June.

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