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Today's speaker: Matt Blackwell (Harvard), "Title: On Model Dependence in the Estimation of Interactive Effects"
Abstract: Heterogeneous effects are ubiquitous in the social sciences and are often an important component of--and means of assessing--theoretical arguments. A common strategy to assess this heterogeneity is to include a single multiplicative interaction term between the treatment and a hypothesized effect moderator in a regression model. In this paper, we show how inferences about interactions under this approach are highly sensitive to modeling choices about how the effect modifier interacts with other covariates, an issue almost never discussed in practice. We propose an alternative strategy that uses machine learning techniques to allow for more flexible estimation of interactions. We apply this approach to two applications: the effect of direct primary adoption on third-party voting, with heterogeneity by region, and the effects of remittances on political protest as moderated by level of democracy.
The Applied Statistics Workshop (Gov 3009) meets all academic year, Wednesdays, 12pm-1:30pm, in CGIS K354. This workshop is a forum for advanced graduate students, faculty, and visiting scholars to present and discuss methodological or empirical work in progress in an interdisciplinary setting. The workshop features a tour of Harvard's statistical innovations and applications with weekly stops in different fields and disciplines and includes occasional presentations by invited speakers. Free lunch is provided.
More information is available at the Gov 3009 website: https://projects.iq.harvard.edu/applied.stats.workshop-gov3009