When can history be our guide? The pitfalls of counterfactual inference

When can history be our guide? The pitfalls of counterfactual inference (2007)

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by Gary King , Langche Zeng

Venue:	International Studies Quarterly
Citations:	8 - 4 self

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Datum	Value	Source
TITLE	When can history be our guide? The pitfalls of counterfactual inference	INFERENCE
AUTHOR NAME	Gary King	SVM HeaderParse 0.2
AUTHOR AFFIL	Harvard University, Institute for Quantitative Social Science	SVM HeaderParse 0.2
AUTHOR NAME	Langche Zeng	SVM HeaderParse 0.2
AUTHOR AFFIL	University of California-San Diego	SVM HeaderParse 0.2
ABSTRACT	Inferences about counterfactuals are essential for prediction, answering ‘‘what if ’ ’ questions, and estimating causal effects. However, when the counterfactuals posed are too far from the data at hand, conclusions drawn from well-specified statistical analyses become based on speculation and convenient but indefensible model assumptions rather than empirical evidence. Unfortunately, standard statistical approaches assume the veracity of the model rather than revealing the degree of model-dependence, so this problem can be hard to detect. We develop easy-to-apply methods to evaluate counterfactuals that do not require sensitivity testing over specified classes of models. If an analysis fails the tests we offer, then we know that substantive results are sensitive to at least some modeling choices that are not based on empirical evidence. We use these methods to evaluate the extensive scholarly literatures on the effects of changes in the degree of democracy in a country (on any dependent variable) and separate analyses of the effects of UN peacebuilding efforts. We find evidence that many scholars are inadvertently drawing conclusions based more on modeling hypotheses than on evidence in the data. For some research questions, history contains insufficient information to be our guide. Free software that accompanies this paper implements all our suggestions. Social science is about making inferencesFusing facts we know to learn about facts we do not know. Some inferential targets (the facts we do not know) are factual, which means that they exist even if we do not know them. In early 2003, Saddam Hussein was obviously either alive or dead, but the world did not know which it was	SVM HeaderParse 0.2
YEAR	2007	INFERENCE
VENUE	International Studies Quarterly	INFERENCE
VENUE TYPE	JOURNAL	INFERENCE
CITATIONS	30 found	ParsCit 1.0