The DOI matches its Crossref record; 11 of the 11 references it cites were found in a registry or an index.
The Dangers of Extreme Counterfactuals
Open accessAbstract
We address the problem that occurs when inferences about counterfactuals—predictions, “what-if” questions, and causal effects—are attempted far from the available data. The danger of these extreme counterfactuals is that substantive conclusions drawn from statistical models that fit the data well turn out to be based largely on speculation hidden in convenient modeling assumptions that few would be willing to defend. Yet existing statistical strategies provide few reliable means of identifying extreme counterfactuals. We offer a proof that inferences farther from the data allow more model dependence and then develop easy-to-apply methods to evaluate how model dependent our answers would be to specified counterfactuals. These methods require neither sensitivity testing over specified classes of models nor evaluating any specific modeling assumptions. If an analysis fails the simple tests we offer, then we know that substantive results are sensitive to at least some modeling choices that are not based on empirical evidence. Free software that accompanies this article implements all the methods developed.
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Cites
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Hastie, T., Friedman, J., & Tibshirani, R. (2001) · Springer Series in Statistics · doi:10.1007/978-0-387-21606-5 · Cited by 24,162
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Bishop, C. M. (1995) · doi:10.1093/oso/9780198538493.001.0001 · Cited by 12,287
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Rubin, D. B. (1974) · Journal of Educational Psychology · doi:10.1037/h0037350 · Cited by 9,436
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King, G., Keohane, R. O., & Verba, S. (1994) · Princeton University Press · doi:10.1515/9781400821211 · Cited by 7,225
Self-citationStatistics and Causal Inference
Holland, P. W. (1986) · Journal of the American Statistical Association · doi:10.1080/01621459.1986.10478354 · Cited by 5,293
Hoeting, J. A., Madigan, D., Raftery, A. E., & Volinsky, C. T. (1999) · Statistical Science · doi:10.1214/ss/1009212519 · Cited by 4,118 · cited 1×
“…methods, or transdimensional Markov Chains are also useful, but only when it is feasible to identify the relevant class of models for exploration (Hoeting et al. 1999; Imai and King 2004; Sisson 2005) In most situations, the approach we recommend, which does not require choosing classes of…”
BackgroundCausal Diagrams for Epidemiologic Research
Greenland, S., Pearl, J., & Robins, J. M. (1999) · Epidemiology · doi:10.1097/00001648-199901000-00008 · Cited by 3,728
Characterizing Selection Bias Using Experimental Data
Heckman, J., Ichimura, H., Smith, J., & Todd, P. (1998) · Econometrica · doi:10.2307/2999630 · Cited by 2,286
THE ESTIMATION OF CAUSAL EFFECTS FROM OBSERVATIONAL DATA
Winship, C., & Morgan, S. L. (1999) · Annual Review of Sociology · doi:10.1146/annurev.soc.25.1.659 · Cited by 890
"Truth" Is Stranger than Prediction, More Questionable than Causal Inference
King, G. (1991) · American Journal of Political Science · doi:10.2307/2111506 · Cited by 67
Self-citation
Cited by
Abadie, A., Diamond, A., & Hainmueller, J. (2010) · Journal of the American Statistical Association · doi:10.1198/jasa.2009.ap08746 · Cited by 5,513
Matching Methods for Causal Inference: A Review and a Look Forward
Stuart, E. A. (2010) · Statistical Science · doi:10.1214/09-sts313 · Cited by 5,478
MatchIt : Nonparametric Preprocessing for Parametric Causal Inference
Ho, D. E., Imai, K., King, G., & Stuart, E. A. (2011) · Journal of Statistical Software · doi:10.18637/jss.v042.i08 · Cited by 4,385
Self-citationCausal Inference without Balance Checking: Coarsened Exact Matching
Iacus, S. M., King, G., & Porro, G. (2012) · Political Analysis · doi:10.1093/pan/mpr013 · Cited by 3,563
Self-citationWhy Propensity Scores Should Not Be Used for Matching
King, G., & Nielsen, R. (2019) · Political Analysis · doi:10.1017/pan.2019.11 · Cited by 1,706
Self-citation
Metadata
- Authors
- King, G., & Zeng, L.
- Venue
- Political Analysis
- Publisher
- Cambridge University Press (CUP)
- Published
- 2006
- Volume
- 14
- Issue
- 2
- Pages
- 131-159
- ISSN
- 1047-1987 (ISSN-L)
- 1476-4989
- OpenAlex
- W2121275048
- Cited by
- 540
- References
- 11
- FWCI
- 12.17
- Type
- journal article
- Language
- en
- Open access
- bronze
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