Dear workshop community, We will convene for the Applied Statistics Workshop (Gov 3009) next week on Wednesday (11/14). The speaker is* Matthew Blackwell *(Harvard Gov) who will be presenting his work "Telescope Matching: A Flexible Approach to Estimating Direct Effects" (paper link <http://www.mattblackwell.org/files/papers/telescope_matching.pdf>). *Where:* CGIS Knafel Building, Room K354 (see this link <https://map.harvard.edu/?bld=04471&level=9> for directions). *When: *Wednesday, November 14th at 12 noon - 1:30 pm. *Abstract:* Estimating the direct effect of a treatment fixing the value of a consequence of that treatment is becoming a common part of social science research. In many cases, however, these effects are difficult to estimate standard methods since they can induce post-treatment bias. More complicated methods like marginal structural models or structural nested mean models can recover direct effects in these situations but require parametric models for the outcome or the post-treatment covariates. In this paper, we propose an alternative approach, which we call telescope matching, to estimating direct effects. The method combines matching and regression to impute missing counterfactual outcomes in a flexible manner. Using simulation and empirical studies, we show how this approach weakens model dependence for researchers estimating direct treatment effects. *All are welcome! Lunch is provided! * Best, Connor Jerzak Applied Statistics Workshop -- Graduate Student Coordinator An anonymous feedback form for the workshop can be found here at this link <https://docs.google.com/forms/d/e/1FAIpQLScp4lPVBtp4Akf6K6ggmfcTUSIUHEJX89-CU8HWrQPpe9pjTw/viewform?usp=sf_link>. Workshop listserv sign-up at this link <https://lists.fas.harvard.edu/mailman/listinfo/gov3009-l>.