Glynn on "Assessing the Empirical Evidence for Mechanism Specific Causal Effects" 

 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 

  
Update: Adam provided   this paper   as background for his presentation