Monotone Ecological Inference

Abstract

We study monotone ecological inference, a partial identification approach to ecological inference. The approach exploits information about one or both of the following conditional associations: (1) outcome differences between groups within the same neighborhood, and (2) outcomes differences within the same group across neighborhoods with different group compositions. We show how assumptions about the sign of these conditional associations, whether individually or in relation to one another, can yield informative sharp bounds in ecological inference settings. We illustrate our proposed approach using county-level data to study differences in Covid-19 vaccination rates among Republicans and Democrats in the United States.