[gov3009-l] Glynn on "Assessing the Empirical Evidence for Mechanism Specific Causal Effects"

Dear Applied Statistics Community, Please join us Wednesday, November 19th, when Adam Glynn—Government Department—will present his research, "Assessing the Empirical Evidence for Mechanism Specific Causal Effects". Adam provided the following abstract: Social scientists often cite the importance of mechanism specific causal knowledge, both for its intrinsic scientific value and as a necessity for informed policy. In this talk, I use counterfactual causal models to re-assess the empirical evidence for two oft cited examples from American and comparative politics: the voting habit effect that is not due to campaign attention and the effect of oil production on the likelihood of civil war onset that is due to the weakening of state capacity. Utilizing decompositions of direct and indirect effects, I discuss a number of identification strategies, and demonstrate through sensitivity and bounding analysis that the evidence for the aforementioned examples is weaker than is typically understood. The applied statistics workshop meets at 12 noon in room K-354, CGIS-Knafel (1737 Cambridge St) with a light lunch. Presentations start at 1215 pm and usually end around 130 pm. As always, all are welcome and please email me with any questions Cheers, Justin Grimmer