Statistical Controls Are Great - Except When They're Not!

A blog post today, titled, How Race Discrimination in Law Enforcement Actually Works", caught my eye. Seemed like an important topic. The post, by Ezra Klein, appeared on Vox.

I'm not going to discuss it in any detail, but I think that some readers of this blog will enjoy reading it. Here are a few selected passages, to whet your collective appetite:

"You see it all the time in studies. "We controlled for..." And then the list starts. The longer the better." (Oh boy, can I associate with that. Think of all of those seminars you've sat through.......)

"The problem with controls is that it's often hard to tell the difference between a variable that's obscuring the thing you're studying and a variable that is the thing you're studying."

"The papers brag about their controls. They dismiss past research because it had too few controls." (How many seminars was that?)

"Statistical Controls Are Great - Except When They're Not!"

© 2014, David E. Giles

Here's Your Reading List!

As we count the year down, there's always time for more reading!

• Birg, L. and A. Goeddeke, 2014. Christmas economics - A sleigh ride. Discussion Paper No. 220, CEGE, University of Gottingen.
• Geraci, A., D. Fabbri, and C. Monfardini, 2014. Testing exogeneity of multinomial regressors in count data models: Does two stage residual inclusion work? Working Paper 14/03, Health, Econometrics and Data Group, University of York.
• Li, Y. and D. E. Giles, 2014. Modelling volatility spillover effects between developed stock markets and Asian emerging stock markets. International Journal of Finance and Economics, in press.
• Ma, J. and M. Wohar, 2014. Expected returns and expected dividend growth: Time to rethink an established literature. Applied Economics, 46, 2462-2476. 
• Qin, D., 2014. Resurgence of instrument variable estimation and fallacy of endogeneity. Economics Discussion Papers No. 2014-42, Kiel Institute for the World Economy. 
• Romano, J. P. and M. Wolf, 2014. Resurrecting weighted least squares. Working Paper No. 172, Department of Economics, University of Zurich.
• Tchatoka, F.D., 2014. Specification tests with weak and invalid instruments. Working Paper No. 2014-05, School of Economics, University of Adelaide.

© 2014, David E. Giles