scholarly journals Sample-Selection Bias and Height Trends in the Nineteenth-Century United States

2019 ◽  
Vol 79 (1) ◽  
pp. 99-138 ◽  
Author(s):  
Ariell Zimran
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
Selection Bias ◽  
Sample Selection ◽  
The United States ◽  
Sample Selection Bias ◽  
Birth Cohorts ◽  
Modern Economic Growth ◽  
Modern Economic ◽  
Nineteenth Century United States ◽  
Height Data

After adjusting for sample-selection bias, I find a net decline in average stature of 0.64 inches in the birth cohorts of 1832–1860 in the United States. This result supports the veracity of the Antebellum Puzzle—a deterioration of health during early modern economic growth in the United States. However, this adjustment alters the trend in average stature in the same cohort range, validating concerns over bias in the historical heights literature. The adjustment is based on census-linked military height data and uses a two-step semi-parametric sample-selection model to adjust for selection on observables and unobservables.

scholarly journals US – Anti-Dumping Measures on Certain Shrimp from Viet Nam: A Stir-Fry of Seafood, Statistics, and Lacunae

2013 ◽  
Vol 12 (2) ◽  
pp. 433-462 ◽  
Author(s):  
TOMER BROUDE ◽  
MICHAEL MOORE
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
Statistical Analysis ◽  
Selection Bias ◽  
Sample Selection ◽  
The United States ◽  
Sample Selection Bias ◽  
Viet Nam ◽  
Panel Report

AbstractThis unappealed Panel Report deals with now standard controversies involving US zeroing practices, but also involves a number of novel problems in administrative reviews of US anti-dumping orders that transcend zeroing issues. Most importantly, this dispute highlights the economic, legal, and statistical importance of sample-selection bias when calculating ‘all others’ rates for exporters that were not queried during dumping investigations. Sampling is particularly problematic in this dispute since US investigators found only zero and de minimis margins in the administrative reviews, a situation in which the relevant provision of the Anti-Dumping Agreement appears to provide no guidance (an apparent ‘lacuna’). The Panel did not directly deal with the key sample-selection issues in the case, and so we provide an alternative legal and statistical analysis. These issues are likely to become more important as the practice of zeroing is phased out in the United States. Indeed, sampling may well be the new zeroing.

scholarly journals Incumbency Effects in a Comparative Perspective: Evidence from Brazilian Mayoral Elections

2015 ◽  
Vol 23 (1) ◽  
pp. 113-126 ◽  
Author(s):  
Leandro De Magalhaes
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
Selection Bias ◽  
Sample Selection ◽  
The United States ◽  
Sample Selection Bias ◽  
Incumbency Advantage ◽  
Mayoral Elections ◽  
Country Comparison ◽  
Cross Country ◽  
Definition Of

High rerunning rates among incumbents and among the two major parties allow studies of U.S. incumbency advantage to bypass the selection problem of who chooses to rerun. In countries where rerunning is not widespread among individuals or parties, estimation using methods developed for the United States may result in a sample selection bias. In countries with party switching, there may be a disconnect between party and individual estimates. This article proposes a definition of incumbency advantage that is valid for countries that present any of these characteristics and that is valid for cross-country comparison: the effect of incumbency for anindividualpolitician on theunconditionalprobability of winning. I illustrate the issues raised in this article with evidence from Brazilian mayoral elections.

scholarly journals Sample-Selection Biases and the Industrialization Puzzle

2017 ◽  
Vol 77 (1) ◽  
pp. 171-207 ◽  
Author(s):  
Howard Bodenhorn ◽  
Timothy W. Guinnane ◽  
Thomas A. Mroz
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
Selection Bias ◽  
Meta Analysis ◽  
Sample Selection ◽  
Well Being ◽  
The United States ◽  
Compelling Evidence ◽  
Long Term Changes ◽  
The U.S

Understanding long-term changes in human well-being is central to understanding the consequences of economic development. An extensive anthropometric literature purports to show that heights in the United States declined between the 1830s and the 1890s, which is when the U.S. economy modernized. Most anthropometric research contends that declining heights reflect the negative health consequences of industrialization and urbanization. This interpretation, however, relies on sources subject to selection bias. Our meta-analysis shows that the declining height during industrialization emerges primarily in selected samples. We also develop a parsimonious diagnostic test that reveals, but does not correct for, selection bias in height samples. When applied to four representative height samples, the diagnostic provides compelling evidence of selection.

Political Economy of Financial Development: Canada and the United States in the Mirror of the Other, 1790–1840

2006 ◽  
Vol 7 (4) ◽  
pp. 653-665
Author(s):  
Richard Sylla
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
Political Economy ◽  
Financial Development ◽  
The United States ◽  
Business History ◽  
The Political ◽  
British North America ◽  
Modern Economic Growth ◽  
Modern Economic ◽  
Political Conditions

A meeting of the Business History Conference in Toronto with “The Political Economy of Enterprise” as its theme provides an opportunity to consider some historical similarities and differences between the climates of enterprise in Canada and the United States. Because much of my recent work has been on financial development in the United States in the early decades, 1790–1840, I shall focus on that period. During that period, finance, enterprise, and economic development in the United States made great strides. Across the border in British North America, progress in all three areas was limited. The contrast sheds some light on the political conditions that favor financial development, flourishing enterprise, and modern economic growth.

scholarly journals Health and the Economy in the United States from 1750 to the Present

2015 ◽  
Vol 53 (3) ◽  
pp. 503-570 ◽  
Author(s):  
Dora L. Costa
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
Health Knowledge ◽  
Health Indicators ◽  
The United States ◽  
Health Transition ◽  
Wage Returns ◽  
The Poor ◽  
Modern Economic Growth ◽  
Modern Economic ◽  
Virtuous Cycle

I discuss the health transition in the United States, bringing new data to bear on health indicators and investigating the changing relationship between health, income, and the environment. I argue that scientific advances played an outsize role and that health improvements were largest among the poor. Health improvements were not a precondition for modern economic growth. The gains to health are largest when the economy has moved from “brawn” to “brains” because this is when the wage returns to education are high, leading the healthy to obtain more education. More education may improve use of health knowledge, producing a virtuous cycle. ( JEL H51, I10, J13, N31, N32)

Antebellum Puzzle

2015 ◽  
pp. 750-764
Author(s):  
Lee A. Craig
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
Economic Growth ◽  
18Th Century ◽  
The United States ◽  
Long Run ◽  
Modern Economic Growth ◽  
Late 18Th Century ◽  
The Us ◽  
Modern Economic ◽  
The 19Th Century

Since the late 18th century the long-run trend in economic growth—conventionally measured by real gross domestic product, income, and wages—has been positive in the United States and throughout Europe. However, in the 19th century, many Western countries, including the United States, experienced stagnation and even cyclical downturns in the biological standard of living—as measured by, for example, the expectation of life and adult stature—thus creating the “antebellum puzzle,” so named because the downturn began in the decades before the US Civil War. This puzzle suggests that industrialization and modern economic growth were accompanied by an increase in inequality and a decrease in the consumption of net nutrients.

scholarly journals Clarifications of a Puzzle: The Decline in Nutritional Status at the Onset of Modern Economic Growth in the United States

2019 ◽  
Vol 79 (4) ◽  
pp. 1129-1153 ◽  
Author(s):  
John Komlos ◽  
Brian A'Hearn
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
Economic Growth ◽  
Negative Selection ◽  
The United States ◽  
Historical Evidence ◽  
Labor Market Conditions ◽  
Modern Economic Growth ◽  
Random Samples ◽  
Physical Stature ◽  
Modern Economic

Bodenhom, Guinnane, and Mroz (2017) are critical of anthropometric research using based on non-random samples. Declining height trends in military and prison data, they argue, are artifacts of negative selection during favorable labor market conditions. We study height trends in the United States in the antebellum decades, which coincided with the onset of modem economic growth. We find that neither the historical evidence nor their own statistical analysis support their views. The decline in physical stature in the decades before the Civil War was real, as Zimran (2019) has also shown.

Corporate Social Performance and Financial Performance: Sample-Selection Issues

2015 ◽  
Vol 56 (6) ◽  
pp. 889-918 ◽  
Author(s):  
Ali M. Shahzad ◽  
Mark P. Sharfman
Keyword(s):  
Financial Performance ◽  
Selection Bias ◽  
Corporate Social Performance ◽  
Positive Impact ◽  
Social Performance ◽  
Sample Selection ◽  
The United States ◽  
Sample Selection Bias ◽  
Public Corporations ◽  
Corporate Social

The vast majority of extant empirical research examining the relationship between corporate social performance (CSP) and financial performance (FP) selects samples of only those firms which are observed engaging in CSP. In this study, the authors assert that firms’ efforts to pursue CSP and subsequently their appearance in social-choice investment advisory (SIA) firms’ ranking databases are non-random. Studying the CSP–FP link using selected samples of only those firms whose social performance is ranked by SIA firms introduces a sample-selection bias which limits generalization of results to a population of all firms, and at worst provides alternate explanations for observed relationships. The authors test these assertions on a large sample of public corporations in the United States over 6 years and find a sample-selection bias. Upon correction of this bias, this study confirms the positive impact of CSP on FP.

Recognizing Sample-Selection Bias in Historical Data

2020 ◽  
Vol 44 (3) ◽  
pp. 525-554 ◽  
Author(s):  
Ariell Zimran
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
Social Science ◽  
Selection Bias ◽  
Historical Data ◽  
Sample Selection ◽  
Sample Selection Bias ◽  
Historical Sources ◽  
Science History ◽  
Social Science History

ABSTRACTRecent research has ignited a debate in social science history over whether and how to draw conclusions for whole populations from sources that describe only select subsets of these populations. The idiosyncratic availability and survival of historical sources create a threat of sample-selection bias—an error that arises when there are systematic differences between the observed sample and the population of interest. This danger is common in studying trends in health as measured by average stature—scholars can often observe these trends only for soldiers and other similar groups; but whether these patterns are representative of those of the broader population is unclear. This article illustrates what simple patterns in a potentially selected sample can be used to recognize the presence of sample-selection bias in a source, and to understand how such bias might affect conclusions drawn from this source. Applying this intuition to the use of military data to describe stature in the antebellum United States, I present several simple empirical exercises based on these patterns. Finally, I use the results of these exercises to describe how sample-selection bias might affect the use of these data in testing for differences in average stature between the Northeast and the Midwest.

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