Inference in tough places : essays on modeling and matching with applications to civil conflict
Name
895641002-MIT.pdf
Description
Full printable version
Size
10.67 MB
Format
Adobe PDF
Checksum (MD5)
9b5590ddd022e78d7cb8a77d23c505ce
Author(s)
Hazlett, Chad J
Hainmueller, Jens
Advisor(s)
Jens Hainmueller.
Alternative Title
Essays on modeling and matching with applications to civil conflict
Date Issued
2014
Publisher
Massachusetts Institute of Technology
Abstract
This dissertation focuses on the challenges of making inferences from observational data in the social sciences, with particular application to situations of violent conflict. The first essay utilizes quasi-experimental conditions to examine the effects of violence against civilians in Darfur, Sudan on attitudes towards peace and reconciliation. The second and third essays both address a common but overlooked challenge to making inferences from observational data: even when unobserved confounding can be ruled out, correctly "conditioning on" or "adjusting for" covariates remains a challenge. In all but the simplest cases, existing methods ensure unbiased estimation only when the investigator can correctly specify the functional relationship between covariates and the outcome. The second essay (with Jens Hainmueller) introduces Kernel Regularized Least Sqaures (KRLS), a flexible modelling approach that provides investigators with a powerful tool to estimate marginal effects, without linearity or additivity assumptions, and at low risk of misspecification bias. The third essay introduces Kernel Balancing (KBAL), a weighting method that mitigates the risk of misspecification bias by establishing high-order balance between treated and control samples without balance testing or a specification search.
Description
Thesis: Ph. D., Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Department of Political Science, 2014.
Cataloged from PDF version of thesis.
Includes bibliographical references (pages 153-156).
Subjects
Political Science.
MIT Department
Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Department of Political Science
Terms of Use
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