It would not be an exaggeration to say that many of us see academic statistics as “the sick man of science,” an alarming diagnosis in light of the central role it plays in science in general. The situation is maintained through specious and often byzantine rationales for destructive traditions, which is as expected from another […]
Statistics & Econometrics
Mathematics is a limited component of solutions to real-world problems, as it expresses only what is expected to be true if all our assumptions are correct, including implicit assumptions that are omnipresent and often incorrect. Statistical methods are rife with implicit assumptions whose violation can be life-threatening when results from them are used to set […]
This effort to create foundations for the probability approach in econometrics finally results in an inconsistent set of claims in its defence. First, there are vast amounts of experience which warrant a frequency interpretation. This is supported by repetitive discussions of experimental design, but the inability to experiment inspires an epistemological interpretation. Then Haavelmo mentions […]
Imagine a dictator “game” in which a mixed-sex group of experimental subjects are used as first players who can decide which share of their initial endowment they give to a second player (one person acts as second player for the whole group). Additionally, assume that the experimental subjects are a convenience sample but not a […]
Kevin Lewis points us to this recent paper, “Can invasive species lead to sedentary behavior? The time use and obesity impacts of a forest-attacking pest,” published in Elsevier’s Journal of Environmental Economics and Management, which has the following abstract: “Invasive species can significantly disrupt environmental quality and flows of ecosystem services and we are still […]
RCTs establish causal claims. They are very good at this. Indeed, given the probabilistic theory of causality it follows formally that positive results in an ideal RCT with treatment C and outcome E deductively implies ‘C causes E in the experimental population’. Though the move from the RCT to a policy prediction that C will … … Continue reading
No estimated causal results are thus affected solely by the intervention but by many other background attributes and conditions that can give rise to bias between, within or across trial groups. A number of these influence a treatment’s estimated causal effects both within and outside a trial setting. That these and other such demanding preconditions (concauses) would be […]
In his history of experimental social science — Randomistas: How radical researchers are changing our world — Andrew Leigh gives an introduction to the RCT (randomized controlled trial) method for conducting experiments in medicine, psychology, development economics, and policy evaluation. Although it mentions there are critiques that can be waged against it, the author does […]