Dear all, The next seminar in our series of statistics talks for people interested in quantitative methods in biology and medicine will take place on Thursday 7 April 2016 at 11h00, in the Salle Delachaux (Biopôle 2, first floor, Route de la Corniche 10, 1010 Lausanne, M2: Vennes). The speaker will be Prof. Michael Lechner from the Department of Economics, University of St. Gallen, Switzerland. Title: The finite sample performance of inference methods for propensity score matching and weighting estimators Abstract: This paper investigates the finite sample properties of a range of inference methods for propensity score-based matching and weighting estimators frequently applied to evaluate the average treatment effect on the treated. We analyze both asymptotic approximations and bootstrap methods for computing variances and confidence intervals in our simulation design, which is based on large scale labor market data from Germany and varies with respect to treatment selectivity, effect heterogeneity, the share of treated, and the sample size. The results suggest that in general, the bootstrap procedures dominate the asymptotic ones in terms of size and power for both matching and weighting estimators. Furthermore, the results are qualitatively quite robust across the various simulation features. Hope to see you there! Valentin (for the organizers: Jérôme Goudet, Valentin Rousson, Frédéric Schütz) CHUV centre hospitalier universitaire vaudois Valentin ROUSSON - Professeur mathematicien/statisticien Département universitaire de medecine et santé communautaires (DUMSC) Médecine sociale et préventive (IUMSP) Biostatistique et méthodes quantitatives +41 (0)21 314 73 28 TEL Valentin.Rousson@chuv.chmailto:Valentin.Rousson@chuv.ch www.chuv.chhttp://www.chuv.ch/