gov3009-l November 2010

gov3009-l@lists.fas.harvard.edu

1 participants
5 discussions

Carpenter on "How Random are Marginal Election Outcomes?"

by Matt Blackwell

Hi all, We hope that you can join us for the Applied Statistics Workshop this Wednesday, December 1st when we will be happy to have Dan Carpenter from the Department of Government, presenting on regression discontinuity designs in marginal elections. You will find an abstract below, along with links to two papers. The first is the paper for the talk and the second is supplementary material about how to model these elections using a continuous-time, continuous-space framework in the field of stochastic differential games. As always, we will serve a light lunch and the talk will begin around 12:15p. “How Random are Marginal Election Outcomes? A Critical Examination of Regression Discontinuity Designs for Causal Inference” Dan Carpenter Department of Government, Harvard University CGIS K354 (1737 Cambridge St.) Wednesday, December 1st, 12 noon Abstract: Elections with small margins of victory represent an important form of electoral competition and, increasingly, an opportunity for causal inference. Scholars using regression discontinuity designs (RDD) have interpreted the winners of close elections as randomly separated from the losers, using marginal election results as an experimental assignment of offce-holding to one candidate versus the other. In this paper we suggest that marginal elections may not be as random as RDD analysts suggest. We draw upon the simple intuition that elections that are expected to be close will attract greater campaign expenditures before the election and invite legal challenges and even fraud after the election. We present theoretical models that predict systematic differences between winners and losers, even in elections with the thinnest victory margins. We test predictions of our models on a dataset of all House elections from 1946 to 1990. We demonstrate that candidates whose parties hold structural advantages in their district are systematically more likely to win close elections at a wide range of bandwidths. Our findings call into question the use of close elections for causal inference and demonstrate that marginal elections mask structural advantages that may be troubling normatively. (Co-authored with Justin Grimmer, Eitan Hersh, and Brian Feinstein) Paper: http://www.iq.harvard.edu/events/sites/iq.harvard.edu.events/files/CloseEle… Supplement: http://www.iq.harvard.edu/events/sites/iq.harvard.edu.events/files/Suppleme… Cheers, matt. ~~~~~~~~~~~ Matthew Blackwell PhD Candidate Institute for Quantitative Social Science Department of Government Harvard University url: http://people.fas.harvard.edu/~blackwel/ ~~~~~~~~~~~ Matthew Blackwell PhD Candidate Institute for Quantitative Social Science Department of Government Harvard University url: http://people.fas.harvard.edu/~blackwel/

13 years, 4 months

No Applied Statistics this week

by Matt Blackwell

Hi there, This is a friendly reminder that there will be no Applied Statistics Workshop this Wednesday, due to the Thanksgiving holiday. We will reconvene next Wednesday, December 1st, when we will have Dan Carpenter from the Department of Government speaking about regression discontinuity design with close elections. It will be the last meeting of the term. Hope to see you then. In addition, we are currently preparing the schedule for the Spring term. If you are interested in presenting, have in mind a possible speaker, or have a topic that you would like to see at the workshop, please feel free to email me (mblackwell(a)iq.harvard.edu). Cheers, matt. ~~~~~~~~~~~ Matthew Blackwell PhD Candidate Institute for Quantitative Social Science Department of Government Harvard University url: http://people.fas.harvard.edu/~blackwel/

13 years, 5 months

Raškovič on “Managing supplier-buyer relationships in transnational companies”

by Matt Blackwell

We hope that you can join us for the Applied Statistics Workshop this Wednesday, November 17th when we will be happy to have Matevž Raškovič from the University of Ljubljana, who is currently a Visiting Fellow in the Sociology Department. You will find an abstract below. As always, we will serve a light lunch and the talk will begin around 12:15p. “Managing supplier-buyer relationships in transnational companies: the case of Danfoss” Matevž Raškovič University of Ljubljana CGIS K354 (1737 Cambridge St.) Wednesday, November 17th 12 noon Abstract: This talk is part of an ongoing PhD research taking place at the Faculty of Economics and Faculty of Social Sciences at the University of Ljubljana in Slovenia, and the Technical University Eindhoven in the Netherlands. The research is motivated by literature on the different ‘mentalities’ of international companies and the fact that transnational companies, as a unique type of an international company mentality, are increasingly being understood as communities and spaces of social relationships. The research explores the management of supplier-buyer relationships within Danfoss, Denmark’s biggest industrial organization. In particular, it looks at how Danfoss manages supplier-buyer relationships to be both globally efficient and flexible, while at the same time facilitating learning. Balancing all these three strategic goals presents a considerable challenge for all internationally-active companies. The talk will offer a short theoretical background for the research and focus on presenting the multi-method mixed research design built around two separate two-mode egocentric cognitive social networks. Cheers, matt. ~~~~~~~~~~~ Matthew Blackwell PhD Candidate Institute for Quantitative Social Science Department of Government Harvard University url: http://people.fas.harvard.edu/~blackwel/

13 years, 5 months

VanderWeele on "A marginal structural model for loneliness"

by Matt Blackwell

Hi all, We hope that you can join us for the Applied Statistics Workshop this Wednesday, November 10th when we will be happy to have Tyler VanderWeele from the Harvard School of Public Health. You will find an abstract below. As always, we will serve a light lunch (sandwiches) and the talk will begin around 12:15p. “A marginal structural model for loneliness: implications for clinical trials?” Tyler VanderWeele Harvard School of Public Health CGIS K354 (1737 Cambridge St.) Wednesday, November 10th, 12 noon Abstract: Clinical scientists, policy makers, and individuals must make decisions concerning effective interventions that address health-related issues. We use longitudinal data on loneliness and depressive symptoms and a class of causal models to illustrate how empirical evidence can be used to inform intervention trial design and clinical practice. Data were obtained from a population-based study of non-Hispanic Caucasians, African Americans and Latino Americans born between 1935 and 1952. Marginal structural causal models were employed to evaluate the extent to which depressive symptoms depend not only on loneliness measured at a single point in time (as in prior studies of the effect of loneliness) but also on an individual?s entire loneliness history. Our results indicate that if interventions to reduce loneliness by one standard deviation were made one and two years prior to assessing depressive symptoms, both would have an effect and would together result in an average reduction in depressive symptoms of 0.33 standard deviations (95% CI: 0.21, 0.44, P<0.0001). In light of the persistence of the effects of loneliness, our results also suggests that, in the evaluation of interventions on loneliness, it may be important to allow for a considerable follow-up period in assessing outcomes. Cheers, matt. ~~~~~~~~~~~ Matthew Blackwell PhD Candidate Institute for Quantitative Social Science Department of Government Harvard University url: http://people.fas.harvard.edu/~blackwel/

13 years, 5 months

Ramanna on "Network effects in International Financial Reporting Standards"

by Matt Blackwell

Hi all, We hope that you can join us for the Applied Statistics Workshop this Wednesday, November 3rd when we will be happy to have Karthik Ramanna at the Harvard Business School. Karthik will give a talk entitled "Network effects in countries' adoption of International Financial Reporting Standards." You will find an abstract and a link to the paper below. As always, we will serve a light lunch (sandwiches) and the talk will begin around 12:15p. "Network effects in countries' adoption of International Financial Reporting Standards" Karthik Ramanna Harvard Business School CGIS K354 (1737 Cambridge St.) Wednesday, November 3rd, 12 noon Abstract: If a country’s accounting standards represent a political-economic equilibrium, why is that equilibrium for some countries shifting over time in favor of International Financial Reporting Standards (IFRS)? We develop and test the hypothesis that perceived network benefits from the extant worldwide adoption of IFRS influences a country’s shift away from local accounting standards. That is, as more jurisdictions with economic ties to a given country adopt IFRS, perceived benefits from lowering transactions costs to foreign financial-statement users come to outweigh institutional differences (e.g., auditing technology) that make IFRS adoption costly. We find that perceived network benefits increase the degree of IFRS harmonization among countries, although larger countries and countries less dependent on foreign trade have a differentially lower response to these perceived benefits. Paper: http://www.iq.harvard.edu/events/sites/iq.harvard.edu.events/files/SSRN-id1… Cheers, matt. ~~~~~~~~~~~ Matthew Blackwell PhD Candidate Institute for Quantitative Social Science Department of Government Harvard University url: http://people.fas.harvard.edu/~blackwel/

13 years, 5 months

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gov3009-l November 2010