Nonparametric estimation of distributional policy effects

This paper proposes a fully nonparametric procedure to evaluate the effect of a counterfactual change in the distribution of some covariates on the unconditional distribution of an outcome variable of interest. In contrast to other methods, we do not restrict attention to the effect on the mean. In particular, our method can be used to conduct inference oil the change of the distribution function as a whole, its moments and quantiles, inequality measures such as the Lorenz curve or Gini coefficient, and to test for stochastic dominance. The practical applicability of our procedure is illustrated via a simulation study and an empirical example. (C) 2009 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.