began (whereas perform_during is the same but after the treatment started I experiment began);L a. Estimate the ATE of wfh on perform_duri'ng using regression but without using the variable perform_before. Provide a 95% confidence interval. [6 points] b. Estimate the ATE of wfh on perform_during, now also adding the variable perform_before as a covariate to increase the precision of our ATE estimate. What is the new 95% confidence interval? [6 points] c. Compute a new variable called beforeiafteridifference defined as performiduri'ng - performibefore. Run a regression to estimate the ATE of wfh on beforeiafteridifference, not using any other variables. What is the new 95% confidence interval? [6 points] d. Between the regressions you ran in parts a, b, and c, which is the most precise (that is, which has the smallest standard error on the treatment effect estimate)? Why do you think this regression is the most precise? U points] e. Perform a randomization check by estimating the ATE of the WFH policy on the number of phone calls answered and numbers of orders taken before the experiment started. What do the results indicate to you about the validity of the study's conclusion? [7 POMS] Problem 3 - Using Regression to Measure The Impact of Social Pressure on Voter Turnout [34 points] Does shaming people into doing good work? Or does itjust cause people to react negatively, even causing them to do the opposite? In the United States, voting is considered a social norm, such that when people learn that others have not voted, they judge them more negatively -- just as people judge others more negatively when they learn they don't recycle or don't pay their taxes. Knowing they could be negatively judged in this way, do many people vote in order to avoid the shame of being a nonvoter? And, can social innovators use this social norm to their benefit? A study by Alan Gerber and Don Green (you do not need to read it) examined this question. They obtained the publicly available voter rolls from the Michigan Secretary of State and randomly assigned voters to one of five conditions ahead of the 2006 primary election. One condition was a control group that received no mailing. The other four conditions got one of the four mailings given here. The last of the four, the "Neighbors" mailing, contained a list of the voter turnout for all residents of one's own household and for all the other households on a street. Please download a cleaned version of the data here. 1 Both of these variables are standardized. You don't need to know what this means, but here is what it means: This means the authors have taken the variable, divided it by its standard deviation, and subtracted its mean. For example, suppose a call center worker took 200 orders but the average is 150 and the standard deviation is 100. This call center worker would get a score of (200-150)l100 = 0.5, reflecting that she is "0.5 standard deviations better than average.' This is not important to understand or know in order to answer the
