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2014

Daniel O'Brien (Northeastern University) - Ecometrics in the Age of Big Data: Measuring and Assessing Neighborhood Characteristics Using Administrative Records Wednesday, March 12, 2014

Presenter: Daniel O'Brien

Abstract: The collection of large-scale administrative records in electronic form by many cities provides a new opportunity for the measurement and longitudinal tracking of neighborhood characteristics, but one that will require novel methodologies that convert such data into research-relevant measures. The current paper illustrates these challenges by developing measures of physical disorder from Boston’s “Constituent Relationship Management” (CRM) system. A sixteen-month archive of...

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Ned Hall (Harvard) - In Praise of Causal Mechanisms Wednesday, March 5, 2014

Abstract: Consider two theses about causation: (1) Causes are connected to their effects by way of mediating causal mechanisms or processes. (2) Scientific inquiry aims (at least in part) at discerning and describing the causal structure of our world. Some of the best contemporary work on causation claims—often implicitly, but sometimes quite explicitly—that, in giving an account of causation, we should sacrifice (1) for the sake of producing an account that makes the best sense of (2). I will first try to...

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Adam Glynn (Emory Universiity) - Front-Door Difference-in-Differences Estimators: The Effects of Early In-person Voting on Turnout (joint work with Konstantin Kashin) Wednesday, February 26, 2014:
front-door.pdf

Presenter: Adam Glynn

Abstract: In this paper, we develop front-door difference-in-differences estimators that utilize information from post-treatment variables in addition to information from pre-treatment covariates. Even when the front-door criterion does not hold, these estimators allow the identification of causal effects by utilizing assumptions that are analogous to standard difference-in-differences assumptions. We also demonstrate that causal effects can be bounded by front-door and front-door difference-in-differences estimators...

Read more about Adam Glynn (Emory Universiity) - Front-Door Difference-in-Differences Estimators: The Effects of Early In-person Voting on Turnout (joint work with Konstantin Kashin)
James Honaker (Harvard) - Sorting Algorithms for Qualitative Data to Recover Latent Dimensions with Crowdsourced Judgments Wednesday, February 12, 2014:
sorting_algorithms.pdf

Abstract: The Quicksort and Bubble Sort algorithms are commonly implemented procedures in computer science for sorting a set of numbers from low to high in an efficient number of processes using only pairwise comparisons. Because of such algorithms’ reliance on pairwise comparison, they lend themselves to any implementation where a simple judgment requires selecting a winner. We show how such algorithms, adapted for stochastic measurements, are an efficient way to harness human ”crowdsourced” coders who are...

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Tyson Belanger (Harvard) - Fear, Hope, and War: Positive Inducements Help Win Wars Wednesday, February 5, 2014:
fear_hope_and_war.pdf
fhw_tables_-tyson_belanger.pdf

Abstract:  How do states win wars against other states? We have three explanations. By selection effects, states choose more winnable wars. By warfighting, states use negative inducements so enemies fear fighting. And by peacemaking, states use positive inducements so enemies hope for settling. This article investigates peacemaking. It theorizes that states optimally produce war influence only if they efficiently combine both warfighting negative and peacemaking positive inducements. It measures positive inducements by law of war compliance, where...

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Patrick Lam (Harvard) - Voter Persuasion in Compulsory Electorates: Evidence from a Field Experiment in Australia Wednesday, January 29, 2014:
voter_persuasion.pdf

Abstract: Most of the literature on grassroots campaigning focuses on mobilizing potential supporters to turn out to vote. The actual ability of partisan campaigns to boost support by changing voter preferences is unclear. We present the results of a field experiment the Australian Council of Trade Unions (ACTU) ran during the 2013 Australian Federal Election. The experiments were designed to minimize the conservative (the Coalition) vote as part of one of the largest and most extensively documented voter persuasion...

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