IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/p/arx/papers/2208.02038.html
   My bibliography  Save this paper

Bayesian ranking and selection with applications to field studies, economic mobility, and forecasting

Author

Listed:
  • Dillon Bowen

Abstract

Decision-making often involves ranking and selection. For example, to assemble a team of political forecasters, we might begin by narrowing our choice set to the candidates we are confident rank among the top 10% in forecasting ability. Unfortunately, we do not know each candidate's true ability but observe a noisy estimate of it. This paper develops new Bayesian algorithms to rank and select candidates based on noisy estimates. Using simulations based on empirical data, we show that our algorithms often outperform frequentist ranking and selection algorithms. Our Bayesian ranking algorithms yield shorter rank confidence intervals while maintaining approximately correct coverage. Our Bayesian selection algorithms select more candidates while maintaining correct error rates. We apply our ranking and selection procedures to field experiments, economic mobility, forecasting, and similar problems. Finally, we implement our ranking and selection techniques in a user-friendly Python package documented here: https://dsbowen-conditional-inference.readthedocs.io/en/latest/.

Suggested Citation

  • Dillon Bowen, 2022. "Bayesian ranking and selection with applications to field studies, economic mobility, and forecasting," Papers 2208.02038, arXiv.org.
  • Handle: RePEc:arx:papers:2208.02038
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://arxiv.org/pdf/2208.02038
    File Function: Latest version
    Download Restriction: no
    ---><---

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Magne Mogstad & Joseph P Romano & Azeem M Shaikh & Daniel Wilhelm, 2024. "Inference for Ranks with Applications to Mobility across Neighbourhoods and Academic Achievement across Countries," The Review of Economic Studies, Review of Economic Studies Ltd, vol. 91(1), pages 476-518.
    2. Peter Bergman & Raj Chetty & Stefanie DeLuca & Nathaniel Hendren & Lawrence F. Katz & Christopher Palmer, 2024. "Creating Moves to Opportunity: Experimental Evidence on Barriers to Neighborhood Choice," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 114(5), pages 1281-1337, May.
    3. Oeindrila Dube & Sendhil Mullainathan & Devin G. Pope, 2021. "A Note on the Level of Customer Support by State Governments: A Mystery-Shopping Approach," NBER Working Papers 29055, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    4. Raj Chetty & John N. Friedman & Nathaniel Hendren & Maggie R. Jones & Sonya R. Porter, 2018. "The Opportunity Atlas: Mapping the Childhood Roots of Social Mobility," NBER Working Papers 25147, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    5. Christopher Genovese & Larry Wasserman, 2002. "Operating characteristics and extensions of the false discovery rate procedure," Journal of the Royal Statistical Society Series B, Royal Statistical Society, vol. 64(3), pages 499-517, August.
    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. Heckman, James & Landersø, Rasmus, 2022. "Lessons for Americans from Denmark about inequality and social mobility," Labour Economics, Elsevier, vol. 77(C).
    2. Magne Mogstad & Joseph P. Romano & Azeem M. Shaikh & Daniel Wilhelm, 2023. "A Comment on: “Invidious Comparisons: Ranking and Selection as Compound Decisions” by Jiaying Gu and Roger Koenker," Econometrica, Econometric Society, vol. 91(1), pages 53-60, January.
    3. Heckman, James J. & Landersø, Rasmus, 2021. "Lessons from Denmark about Inequality and Social Mobility," IZA Discussion Papers 14185, Institute of Labor Economics (IZA).
    4. Peter Leopold S. Bergman & Eric W. Chan & Adam Kapor, 2020. "Housing Search Frictions: Evidence from Detailed Search Data and a Field Experiment," CESifo Working Paper Series 8080, CESifo.
    5. Magne Mogstad & Joseph P Romano & Azeem M Shaikh & Daniel Wilhelm, 2024. "Inference for Ranks with Applications to Mobility across Neighbourhoods and Academic Achievement across Countries," The Review of Economic Studies, Review of Economic Studies Ltd, vol. 91(1), pages 476-518.
    6. Victoria Gregory & Julian Kozlowski & Hannah Rubinton, 2022. "The Impact of Racial Segregation on College Attainment in Spatial Equilibrium," Working Papers 2022-036, Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis, revised 27 Nov 2024.
    7. Isaiah Andrews & Toru Kitagawa & Adam McCloskey, 2024. "Inference on Winners," The Quarterly Journal of Economics, President and Fellows of Harvard College, vol. 139(1), pages 305-358.
    8. Aliprantis, Dionissi & Martin, Hal & Phillips, David, 2022. "Landlords and access to opportunity," Journal of Urban Economics, Elsevier, vol. 129(C).
    9. Yu, Lu & Gu, Jiaying & Volgushev, Stanislav, 2024. "Spectral clustering with variance information for group structure estimation in panel data," Journal of Econometrics, Elsevier, vol. 241(1).
    10. Andros Kourtellos & Chih Ming Tan & Steven N. Durlauf, 2022. "The Great Gatsby Curve," Annual Review of Economics, Annual Reviews, vol. 14(1), pages 571-605, August.
    11. Robert Ainsworth & Rajeev Dehejia & Cristian Pop-Eleches & Miguel Urquiola, 2020. "Information, Preferences, and Household Demand for School Value Added," NBER Working Papers 28267, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    12. Benjamin Goldman & Jamie Gracie & Sonya R. Porter, 2024. "Who Marries Whom? The Role of Segregation by Race and Class," Working Papers 24-30, Center for Economic Studies, U.S. Census Bureau.
    13. Jiaying Gu & Roger Koenker, 2020. "Invidious Comparisons: Ranking and Selection as Compound Decisions," Papers 2012.12550, arXiv.org, revised Sep 2021.
    14. Morris A. Davis & Jesse Gregory & Daniel A. Hartley & Kegon T. K. Tan, 2021. "Neighborhood effects and housing vouchers," Quantitative Economics, Econometric Society, vol. 12(4), pages 1307-1346, November.
    15. Wong, Francis & Kermani, Amir, 2022. "Racial Disparities in Housing Returns," VfS Annual Conference 2022 (Basel): Big Data in Economics 264099, Verein für Socialpolitik / German Economic Association.
    16. Andreas Petrou-Zeniou & Azeem M. Shaikh, 2024. "Inference on Multiple Winners with Applications to Microcredit and Economic Mobility," Papers 2410.19212, arXiv.org.
    17. Tamar Ramot-Nyska, 2023. "Changing Residential Mobility Considerations: The Case of Public Housing in Israel," Bank of Israel Working Papers 2023.15, Bank of Israel.
    18. Jiaying Gu & Roger Koenker, 2023. "Reply to: Comments on “Invidious Comparisons: Ranking and Selection as Compound Decisions”," Econometrica, Econometric Society, vol. 91(1), pages 61-66, January.
    19. Jiaying Gu & Roger Koenker, 2023. "Invidious Comparisons: Ranking and Selection as Compound Decisions," Econometrica, Econometric Society, vol. 91(1), pages 1-41, January.
    20. Bratu, Cristina & Bolotnyy, Valentin, 2023. "Immigrant intergenerational mobility: A focus on childhood environment," European Economic Review, Elsevier, vol. 151(C).

    More about this item

    NEP fields

    This paper has been announced in the following NEP Reports:

    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:arx:papers:2208.02038. 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: arXiv administrators (email available below). General contact details of provider: http://arxiv.org/ .

    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.