Understanding the Past: Statistical Analysis of Causal Attribution
Would the third-wave democracies have been democratized without prior modernization? What proportion of the past militarized disputes between nondemocracies would have been prevented had those dyads been democratic? Although political scientists often ask these questions of causal attribution, exist...
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| Format: | Article |
| Language: | en_US |
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Wiley Blackwell
2014
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| Online Access: | http://hdl.handle.net/1721.1/85887 https://orcid.org/0000-0002-8079-7675 |
| _version_ | 1811090893212483584 |
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| author | Yamamoto, Teppei |
| author2 | Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Department of Political Science |
| author_facet | Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Department of Political Science Yamamoto, Teppei |
| author_sort | Yamamoto, Teppei |
| collection | MIT |
| description | Would the third-wave democracies have been democratized without prior modernization? What proportion of the past militarized disputes between nondemocracies would have been prevented had those dyads been democratic? Although political scientists often ask these questions of causal attribution, existing quantitative methods fail to address them. This article proposes an alternative statistical methodology based on the widely accepted counterfactual framework of causal inference. The contribution of this article is threefold. First, it clarifies differences between causal attribution and causal effects by specifying the type of research questions to which each quantity is relevant. Second, it provides a clear resolution of the long-standing methodological debate on “selection on the dependent variable.” Third, the article derives new nonparametric identification results, showing that the complier probability of causal attribution can be identified using an instrumental variable. The proposed framework is illustrated via empirical examples from three subfields of political science. |
| first_indexed | 2024-09-23T14:53:19Z |
| format | Article |
| id | mit-1721.1/85887 |
| institution | Massachusetts Institute of Technology |
| language | en_US |
| last_indexed | 2024-09-23T14:53:19Z |
| publishDate | 2014 |
| publisher | Wiley Blackwell |
| record_format | dspace |
| spelling | mit-1721.1/858872022-10-01T23:11:10Z Understanding the Past: Statistical Analysis of Causal Attribution Yamamoto, Teppei Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Department of Political Science Yamamoto, Teppei Yamamoto, Teppei Would the third-wave democracies have been democratized without prior modernization? What proportion of the past militarized disputes between nondemocracies would have been prevented had those dyads been democratic? Although political scientists often ask these questions of causal attribution, existing quantitative methods fail to address them. This article proposes an alternative statistical methodology based on the widely accepted counterfactual framework of causal inference. The contribution of this article is threefold. First, it clarifies differences between causal attribution and causal effects by specifying the type of research questions to which each quantity is relevant. Second, it provides a clear resolution of the long-standing methodological debate on “selection on the dependent variable.” Third, the article derives new nonparametric identification results, showing that the complier probability of causal attribution can be identified using an instrumental variable. The proposed framework is illustrated via empirical examples from three subfields of political science. 2014-03-21T19:11:59Z 2014-03-21T19:11:59Z 2011-10 Article http://purl.org/eprint/type/JournalArticle 00925853 1540-5907 http://hdl.handle.net/1721.1/85887 Yamamoto, Teppei. “Understanding the Past: Statistical Analysis of Causal Attribution.” American Journal of Political Science 56, no. 1 (January 2012): 237–256. https://orcid.org/0000-0002-8079-7675 en_US http://dx.doi.org/10.1111/j.1540-5907.2011.00539.x American Journal of Political Science Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-Share Alike http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-sa/4.0/ application/pdf Wiley Blackwell Yamamoto via Jennifer Greenleaf |
| spellingShingle | Yamamoto, Teppei Understanding the Past: Statistical Analysis of Causal Attribution |
| title | Understanding the Past: Statistical Analysis of Causal Attribution |
| title_full | Understanding the Past: Statistical Analysis of Causal Attribution |
| title_fullStr | Understanding the Past: Statistical Analysis of Causal Attribution |
| title_full_unstemmed | Understanding the Past: Statistical Analysis of Causal Attribution |
| title_short | Understanding the Past: Statistical Analysis of Causal Attribution |
| title_sort | understanding the past statistical analysis of causal attribution |
| url | http://hdl.handle.net/1721.1/85887 https://orcid.org/0000-0002-8079-7675 |
| work_keys_str_mv | AT yamamototeppei understandingthepaststatisticalanalysisofcausalattribution |