期刊名称：IWH Diskussionspapiere / Institut für Wirtschaftsforschung Halle
出版年度：2010
卷号：2010
出版社：Institut für Wirtschaftsforschung Halle
摘要：The study contributes to the development of ’standards’ for the application of match-
ing algorithms in empirical evaluation studies. The focus is on the first step of the
matching procedure, the choice of an appropriate distance function. Supplementary
to most former studies, the simulation is strongly based on empirical evaluation
situations. This reality orientation induces the focus on small samples. Furthermore,
variables with different scale levels must be considered explicitly in the matching
process. The choice of the analysed distance functions is determined by the results of
former theoretical studies and recommendations in the empirical literature. Thus, in
the simulation, two balancing scores (the propensity score and the index score) and
the Mahalanobis distance are considered. Additionally, aggregated statistical distance
functions not yet used for empirical evaluation are included. The matching outcomes
are compared using non-parametrical scale-specific tests for identical distributions of
the characteristics in the treatment and the control groups. The simulation results
show that, in small samples, aggregated statistical distance functions are the better
choice for summarising similarities in differently scaled variables compared to the
commonly used measures.
