Bounding Causal Effects in Ecological Inference Problems

2016 ◽  
Vol 5 (3) ◽  
pp. 555-565
Author(s):  
Alejandro Corvalan ◽  
Emerson Melo ◽  
Robert Sherman ◽  
Matt Shum
Keyword(s):  
Voter Turnout ◽  
Causal Effect ◽  
Data Sources ◽  
Causal Effects ◽  
Ecological Inference ◽  
Ecological Data ◽  
Causal Inferences ◽  
Inference Problems ◽  
Electoral Law ◽  
Made In

This note illustrates a new method for making causal inferences with ecological data. We show how to combine aggregate outcomes with individual demographics from separate data sources to make causal inferences about individual behavior. In addressing such problems, even under the selection on observables assumption often made in the treatment effects literature, it is not possible to identify causal effects of interest. However, recent results from the partial identification literature provide sharp bounds on these causal effects. We apply these bounds to data from Chilean mayoral elections that straddle a 2012 change in Chilean electoral law from compulsory to voluntary voting. Aggregate voting outcomes are combined with individual demographic information from separate data sources to determine the causal effect of the change in the law on voter turnout. The bounds analysis reveals that voluntary voting decreased expected voter turnout, and that other causal effects are overstated if the bounds analysis is ignored.

Bounding Causal Effects in Ecological Inference Problems

2015 ◽  
Author(s):  
Alejandro Corvalan ◽  
Emerson Melo ◽  
Robert P Sherman ◽  
Matthew Shum
Keyword(s):  
Causal Effects ◽  
Ecological Inference ◽  
Inference Problems

scholarly journals On the difficulties of evaluating the effect of school facility conditions on student outcomes

2019 ◽  
Vol 3 (1) ◽  
pp. 1-7
Author(s):  
Arnt O. Hopland
Keyword(s):  
Student Outcomes ◽  
Causal Effect ◽  
School Facilities ◽  
Causal Effects ◽  
Omitted Variables ◽  
Causal Inferences ◽  
Policy Makers ◽  
Facility Conditions ◽  
School Facility

ABSTRACT This paper presents various empirical strategies used to analyze the effect from school facilities on student outcomes, and discusses strengths and weaknesses by the methods. A key challenge in studies of student outcomes is that outcomes are affected by many factors and that many of these factors are correlated with each other. Moreover, some factors are difficult to measure, and cannot be observed in data. Hence, it is difficult to avoid problems related to omitted variables bias and the estimated correlations can thus often not be interpreted as causal effects. It is important to be aware of how difficult it is to move on from a correlation to a causal effect. If researchers wrongfully draw causal inferences one risks misleading policy makers into allocating resources to the wrong factors.

scholarly journals Understanding the nature of association between anxiety phenotypes and anorexia nervosa: a triangulation approach

2020 ◽  
Vol 20 (1) ◽  
Author(s):  
E. Caitlin Lloyd ◽  
Hannah M. Sallis ◽  
Bas Verplanken ◽  
Anne M. Haase ◽  
Marcus R. Munafò
Keyword(s):  
Anorexia Nervosa ◽  
Longitudinal Study ◽  
Anxiety Disorder ◽  
Anxiety Disorders ◽  
Causal Effect ◽  
Causal Effects ◽  
Observational Research ◽  
Genome Wide Association Studies ◽  
Genetic Liability ◽  
Depressed Affect

Abstract Background Evidence from observational studies suggests an association between anxiety disorders and anorexia nervosa (AN), but causal inference is complicated by the potential for confounding in these studies. We triangulate evidence across a longitudinal study and a Mendelian randomization (MR) study, to evaluate whether there is support for anxiety disorder phenotypes exerting a causal effect on AN risk. Methods Study One assessed longitudinal associations of childhood worry and anxiety disorders with lifetime AN in the Avon Longitudinal Study of Parents and Children cohort. Study Two used two-sample MR to evaluate: causal effects of worry, and genetic liability to anxiety disorders, on AN risk; causal effects of genetic liability to AN on anxiety outcomes; and the causal influence of worry on anxiety disorder development. The independence of effects of worry, relative to depressed affect, on AN and anxiety disorder outcomes, was explored using multivariable MR. Analyses were completed using summary statistics from recent genome-wide association studies. Results Study One did not support an association between worry and subsequent AN, but there was strong evidence for anxiety disorders predicting increased risk of AN. Study Two outcomes supported worry causally increasing AN risk, but did not support a causal effect of anxiety disorders on AN development, or of AN on anxiety disorders/worry. Findings also indicated that worry causally influences anxiety disorder development. Multivariable analysis estimates suggested the influence of worry on both AN and anxiety disorders was independent of depressed affect. Conclusions Overall our results provide mixed evidence regarding the causal role of anxiety exposures in AN aetiology. The inconsistency between outcomes of Studies One and Two may be explained by limitations surrounding worry assessment in Study One, confounding of the anxiety disorder and AN association in observational research, and low power in MR analyses probing causal effects of genetic liability to anxiety disorders. The evidence for worry acting as a causal risk factor for anxiety disorders and AN supports targeting worry for prevention of both outcomes. Further research should clarify how a tendency to worry translates into AN risk, and whether anxiety disorder pathology exerts any causal effect on AN.

scholarly journals The Pice Effects of Competition from Parallel Imports and Therapeutic Alternatives: Using Dynamic Models to Estimate the Causal Effect on the Extensive and Intensive Margins

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
David Granlund
Keyword(s):  
Dynamic Models ◽  
Causal Effect ◽  
The Other ◽  
Causal Effects ◽  
Parallel Imports ◽  
Extensive And Intensive Margins ◽  
Price Effects ◽  
Short And Long Term ◽  
Therapeutic Alternatives

AbstractThis paper studies responses to competition with the use of dynamic models that distinguish between short- and long-term price effects. The dynamic models also allow lagged numbers of competitors to become valid and strong instruments for the current numbers, which enables studying the causal effects using flexible specifications. A first parallel trader is found to decrease prices of exchangeable products by 7% in the long term. On the other hand, prices do not respond to the first competitor that sells therapeutic alternatives; but competition from four or more competitors that sell on-patent therapeutic alternatives decreases prices by about 10% in the long term.

scholarly journals Through what mechanisms do protected areas affect environmental and social outcomes?

2015 ◽  
Vol 370 (1681) ◽  
pp. 20140267 ◽  
Author(s):  
Paul J. Ferraro ◽  
Merlin M. Hanauer
Keyword(s):  
Experimental Data ◽  
Protected Areas ◽  
Empirical Evidence ◽  
Strong Evidence ◽  
Protected Area ◽  
Evidence Base ◽  
Social Outcomes ◽  
Causal Effects ◽  
The Past ◽  
Made In

To develop effective protected area policies, scholars and practitioners must better understand the mechanisms through which protected areas affect social and environmental outcomes. With strong evidence about mechanisms, the key elements of success can be strengthened, and the key elements of failure can be eliminated or repaired. Unfortunately, empirical evidence about these mechanisms is limited, and little guidance for quantifying them exists. This essay assesses what mechanisms have been hypothesized, what empirical evidence exists for their relative contributions and what advances have been made in the past decade for estimating mechanism causal effects from non-experimental data. The essay concludes with a proposed agenda for building an evidence base about protected area mechanisms.

Causal Returns to Education

2006 ◽  
Vol 226 (1) ◽  
Author(s):  
Anton L. Flossmann ◽  
Winfried Pohlmeier
Keyword(s):  
Educational Attainment ◽  
Educational Policy ◽  
Empirical Evidence ◽  
Returns To Education ◽  
Causal Effect ◽  
Causal Effects ◽  
Continuous Treatment ◽  
Treatment Variable ◽  
Secondary Schooling ◽  
Upper Secondary

SummaryThis paper surveys the empirical evidence on causal effects of education on earnings for Germany and compares alternative studies in the light of their underlying identifying assumptions. We work out the different assumptions taken by various studies, which lead to rather different interpretations of the estimated causal effect. In particular, we are interested in the question to what extend causal return estimates are informative regarding educational policy advice. Despite the substantial methodological differences, we have to conclude that the empirical findings for Germany are quite robust and do not deviate substantially from each other. This also holds for the few studies which rely on ignorability conditions, regardless of whether they use educational attainment as a continuous treatment variable or as a discrete treatment indicator. Own estimates based on the matching approach indicate that the selection into upper secondary schooling is suboptimal

Causal inference via string diagram surgery

2021 ◽  
pp. 1-22
Author(s):  
Bart Jacobs ◽  
Aleks Kissinger ◽  
Fabio Zanasi
Keyword(s):  
Causal Inference ◽  
Probabilistic Reasoning ◽  
Causal Effect ◽  
Sufficient Conditions ◽  
Causal Effects ◽  
Stochastic Matrices ◽  
Counterfactual Reasoning ◽  
Special Cases ◽  
String Diagram ◽  
Set Up

Abstract Extracting causal relationships from observed correlations is a growing area in probabilistic reasoning, originating with the seminal work of Pearl and others from the early 1990s. This paper develops a new, categorically oriented view based on a clear distinction between syntax (string diagrams) and semantics (stochastic matrices), connected via interpretations as structure-preserving functors. A key notion in the identification of causal effects is that of an intervention, whereby a variable is forcefully set to a particular value independent of any prior propensities. We represent the effect of such an intervention as an endo-functor which performs ‘string diagram surgery’ within the syntactic category of string diagrams. This diagram surgery in turn yields a new, interventional distribution via the interpretation functor. While in general there is no way to compute interventional distributions purely from observed data, we show that this is possible in certain special cases using a calculational tool called comb disintegration. We demonstrate the use of this technique on two well-known toy examples: one where we predict the causal effect of smoking on cancer in the presence of a confounding common cause and where we show that this technique provides simple sufficient conditions for computing interventions which apply to a wide variety of situations considered in the causal inference literature; the other one is an illustration of counterfactual reasoning where the same interventional techniques are used, but now in a ‘twinned’ set-up, with two version of the world – one factual and one counterfactual – joined together via exogenous variables that capture the uncertainties at hand.

Eviction and Voter Turnout: The Political Consequences of Housing Instability

2021 ◽  
pp. 003232922110507
Author(s):  
Gillian Slee ◽  
Matthew Desmond
Keyword(s):  
Voter Turnout ◽  
Causal Effect ◽  
Additive Model ◽  
The United States ◽  
Data Set ◽  
Endogeneity Bias ◽  
Political Consequences ◽  
Housing Costs ◽  
Election Results ◽  
The Impact

In recent years, housing costs have outpaced incomes in the United States, resulting in millions of eviction filings each year. Yet no study has examined the link between eviction and voting. Drawing on a novel data set that combines tens of millions of eviction and voting records, this article finds that residential eviction rates negatively impacted voter turnout during the 2016 presidential election. Results from a generalized additive model show eviction’s effect on voter turnout to be strongest in neighborhoods with relatively low rates of displacement. To address endogeneity bias and estimate the causal effect of eviction on voting, the analysis treats commercial evictions as an instrument for residential evictions, finding that increases in neighborhood eviction rates led to substantial declines in voter turnout. This study demonstrates that the impact of eviction reverberates far beyond housing loss, affecting democratic participation.

scholarly journals Novel bounds for causal effects based on sensitivity parameters on the risk difference scale

2021 ◽  
Vol 9 (1) ◽  
pp. 190-210
Author(s):  
Arvid Sjölander ◽  
Ola Hössjer
Keyword(s):  
Risk Ratio ◽  
Simulation Study ◽  
Observational Studies ◽  
Causal Effect ◽  
Real Data ◽  
Risk Difference ◽  
Causal Effects ◽  
Ratio Scale ◽  
Unmeasured Confounding ◽  
Range Of Values

Abstract Unmeasured confounding is an important threat to the validity of observational studies. A common way to deal with unmeasured confounding is to compute bounds for the causal effect of interest, that is, a range of values that is guaranteed to include the true effect, given the observed data. Recently, bounds have been proposed that are based on sensitivity parameters, which quantify the degree of unmeasured confounding on the risk ratio scale. These bounds can be used to compute an E-value, that is, the degree of confounding required to explain away an observed association, on the risk ratio scale. We complement and extend this previous work by deriving analogous bounds, based on sensitivity parameters on the risk difference scale. We show that our bounds can also be used to compute an E-value, on the risk difference scale. We compare our novel bounds with previous bounds through a real data example and a simulation study.

scholarly journals Pengembangan Kartu Kata Berbahasa Arab dan Kegiatan Pembelajarannya untuk Siswa Kelas III Madrasah Aliyah

2021 ◽  
Vol 1 (2) ◽  
pp. 251-279
Author(s):  
Muhammad Zahid ‘Afafarrasyihab Rahimadinullah ◽  
Nurul Murtadho ◽  
Achmad Sultoni
Keyword(s):  
Research And Development ◽  
Abstract Word ◽  
Learning Activities ◽  
Data Sources ◽  
Average Score ◽  
Is Research ◽  
Arabic Word ◽  
Specific Learning ◽  
Grade Iii ◽  
Made In

Abstract: Word cards are unique, captivating, and specific learning media. In this research, Arabic word cards are used to improve students’ vocabulary mastery in learning Arabic. This research is aimed to (1) develop Arabic word cards and the learning activities for grade III students of Madrasah Aliyah; (2) identify the effectiveness of using Arabic word cards and the learning activities. The method of this research is Research and Development. The data sources include a subject expert, a media expert, a learning expert, a teacher, and students. The data are collected using questionnaires. The word cards are made in two forms, namely mind map, and word-by-word. The Arabic word cards are equipped with Arabic learning activities. Overall, the result of the development and the research shows that the average score is 89% in the valid category with details as follows: subject expert 91.7%, media expert 68.2%, learning expert 92.5%, teacher’s assessment 100%, and students’ assessment 92.8%. Therefore, it can be concluded that Arabic word cards and the learning activities are effective to be used in learning Arabic for grade III students of Madrasah Aliyah. Keywords: development, word cards, Arabic Abstrak: Kartu kata merupakan salah satu media pembelajaran yang unik, memukau, dan spesifik. Dalam penelitian ini, kartu kata berbahasa Arab digunakan untuk meningkatkan penguasaan kosakata siswa dalam mempelajari bahasa Arab. Penelitian ini bertujuan untuk: (1) Mengembangkan kartu kata berbahasa Arab dan kegiatan pembelajarannya untuk siswa kelas III Madrasah Aliyah; (2) Mendeskripsikan kelayakan pemanfaatan kartu kata berbahasa Arab dan kegiatan pembelajarannya. Metode penelitian yang digunakan dalam penelitian ini adalah Research and Development. Sumber data ini adalah ahli materi, ahli media, ahli pembelajaran, guru, dan siswa. Teknik pengumpulan data menggunakan angket. Pengembangan media ini berupa media kartu kata berbahasa Arab yang memiliki 2 bentuk yaitu bentuk peta konsep dan tampilan perkata. Media kartu kata berbahasa Arab dilengkapi dengan kegiatan pembelajaran bahasa Arab. Secara keseluruhan hasil pengembangan dan penelitian menunjukkan bahwa skor rata-rata sebesar 89% dalam kategori valid dengan rincian: uji ahli materi 91,7%, uji ahli media 68,2%, uji ahli pembelajaran 92,5%, penilaian guru 100%, dan penilaian siswa 92,8%. Dengan demikian, dapat disimpulkan bahwa media kartu kata berbahasa Arab dan kegiatan pembelajaran yang dikembangkan ini layak digunakan dalam pembelajaran bahasa Arab kelas III di Madrasah Aliyah. Kata Kunci: pengembangan, kartu kata, bahasa Arab

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