Lars P. Syll

Användandet av instrumentalvariabler används numera flitigt bland ekonomer och andra samhällsforskare. Inte minst när man vill försöka gå bakom statistikens ‘korrelationer’ och också säga något om ‘kausalitet.’ Tyvärr brister det ofta rejält i tolkningen av de resultat man får med hjälp av den vanligaste metoden som används för detta syfte — statistisk regressionsanalys. Ett exempel från skolområdet belyser detta väl. Ibland hävdas det bland skoldebattörer och politiker att...

Introduction to instrumental variables .[embedded content] Great presentation, but maybe Angrist  should also have pointed out the mistake many economists do when they use instrumental variables analysis and think that their basic identification assumption is empirically testable. It is not. And just swapping an assumption of residuals being uncorrelated with the independent variables with the assumption that the same residuals are uncorrelated with an...

Rösten vi aldrig glömmer .[embedded content] .[embedded content] .[embedded content] En av våra riktigt stora sångare — Svante Thuresson — har gått ur tiden. Musik som glömskan inte rår på. RIP.

Are your instrumental variables — really — relevant, exclusive, and exogenous? .[embedded content]

From association to causation .[embedded content]

‘Ideally controlled experiments’ tell us with certainty what causes what effects — but only given the right closures. Making appropriate extrapolations from (ideal, accidental, natural or quasi) experiments to different settings, populations or target systems, is not easy. “It works there” is no evidence for “it will work here”. Causes deduced in an experimental setting still have to show that they come with a transportability warrant to the target population/system. The...

Only the best is good enough . [embedded content] Bille August’s and Ingmar Bergman’s masterpiece. With breathtakingly beautiful music by Stefan Nilsson.

[embedded content] “Non perderti per niente al mondo lo spettacolo di arte varia di un uomo innamorato di te.”

The role of manipulation and intervention in theories of causality As X’s effect on some other variable in the system S depends on therebeing a possible intervention on X, and the possibility of an intervention inturn depends on the modularity of S, it is a necessary condition for something to be a cause that the system in which it is a cause is modular with respect to that factor. The requirement that all systems are modular with respect to their causes...

In Social Science and Medicine (December 2017), Angus Deaton & Nancy Cartwright argue that RCTs do not have any warranted special status. They are, simply, far from being the ‘gold standard’ they are usually portrayed as: Randomized Controlled Trials (RCTs) are increasingly popular in the social sciences, not only in medicine. We argue that the lay public, and sometimes researchers, put too much trust in RCTs over other methods of in- vestigation. Contrary to frequent...