Structural Representations and Identification of Marginal Policy Effects
Abstract
This paper investigates the structural interpretation of the marginal policy effect (MPE) within nonseparable models. We demonstrate that, for a smooth functional of the outcome distribution, the MPE equals its functional derivative evaluated at the outcome-conditioned weighted average structural derivative. This equivalence is definitional rather than identification-based. Building on this theoretical result, we propose an alternative identification strategy for the MPE that complements existing methods.
Keywords
Cite
@article{arxiv.2506.11694,
title = {Structural Representations and Identification of Marginal Policy Effects},
author = {Zhixin Wang and Yu Zhang and Zhengyu Zhang},
journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:2506.11694},
year = {2025}
}
Comments
This is the accepted version of the article. We have revised the title to "Structural Representations and Identification of Marginal Policy Effects", and believe this new title more accurately reflects the paper's core contributions after the revisions