Measuring What Cannot Be Surveyed: LLMs as Instruments for Latent Cognitive Variables in Labor Economics
衡量无法调查的变量:大语言模型作为劳动经济学的潜在认知测量工具
This paper establishes the theoretical and practical foundations for using Large Language Models (LLMs) as measurement instruments for latent economic variables -- specifically variables that describe the cognitive content of occupational tasks at a level of granularity not achievable with existing survey instruments. I formalize four conditions under which LLM-generated scores constitute valid instruments: semantic exogeneity, construct relevance, monotonicity, and model…