Policy Learning with Unobserved Heterogeneity
[Draft]
[Slides]
[Abstract]
Empirical research shows that individuals' responses to treatments vary along latent characteristics, such as innate ability or motivation. Therefore, a policymaker seeking to maximize social welfare may consider assigning treatments not only based on observed characteristics, but also on estimated latent traits. I characterize how the accuracy of these estimates affects the worst-case performance of policies, deriving new regret bounds for assignment rules that include or exclude them, and illustrate new trade-offs with the complexity of the policy space. I then study how a policymaker can mitigate this effect either through better estimates (via empirical Bayes, or leveraging heterogeneity in the estimation error across units), or by collecting more data before solving the decision problem. In an empirical application in development economics, I show that including a proxy for entrepreneurs' business skills in policy recommendations increases welfare by 6%, and halves the probability of generating welfare losses.
Winner of Unicredit Young Economist
Best Presentation Award
BallotBot: Can AI Chatbots Lower Voter-Information Barriers?
with Elliott Ash and Sergio Galletta
[Draft]
[VoxEU Column]
[Abstract]
This study examines the potential of AI-powered chatbots to increase engagement with political information. We develop and evaluate BallotBot, an AI chatbot with access to official voter guide information from the November 2024 referendums in California. In a pre-registered three-wave survey experiment in the weeks around election day, participants (California voters) were randomly assigned to use either BallotBot or a traditional digital voter guide to answer questions about ballot initiatives. We find that BallotBot access lowered the perceived cost of acquiring information for less-informed participants, fostered greater engagement with political information, while improving participants' ability to correctly answer in-depth questions about ballot measures.
Status: Submitted