Partially identified treatment effects under imperfect compliance: the case of domestic violence

Siddique, Z. (2013) Partially identified treatment effects under imperfect compliance: the case of domestic violence. Journal of the American Statistical Association, 108 (502). pp. 504-513. ISSN 1537-274X doi: 10.1080/01621459.2013.779836

Abstract/Summary

The Minneapolis Domestic Violence Experiment (MDVE) is a randomized social experiment with imperfect compliance which has been extremely influential in how police officers respond to misdemeanor domestic violence. This paper re-examines data from the MDVE, using recent literature on partial identification to find recidivism associated with a policy that arrests misdemeanor domestic violence suspects rather than not arresting them. Using partially identified bounds on the average treatment effect I find that arresting rather than not arresting suspects can potentially reduce recidivism by more than two-and-a-half times the corresponding intent-to-treat estimate and more than two times the corresponding local average treatment effect, even when making minimal assumptions on counterfactuals.