Cyrus Samii
@cdsamii.bsky.social
NYU Politics prof. Methods to inform policy. Governance, conflict, institutions. cyrussamii.com
Political science
26%
Mathematics
24%
Pinned
Cyrus Samii
@cdsamii.bsky.social
· Dec 17
Forthcoming article "Interest-based Negotiation over Natural Resources: Experimental Evidence from Liberia" Darin Christensen, Alexandra C Hartman @cdsamii.bsky.social and Alessandro Toppeta
@eeanews.bsky.social
Teaching materials available: www.eeassoc.org/teaching-mat...
doi.org/10.1093/jeea...
@eeanews.bsky.social
Teaching materials available: www.eeassoc.org/teaching-mat...
doi.org/10.1093/jeea...
Interest-Based Negotiation over Natural Resources: Experimental Evidence from Liberia
Abstract. We experimentally evaluate whether an interest-based negotiation training for community leaders in Liberia improves their ability to strike benef
doi.org
Now in print at JEEA: results from a negotiation training RCT for community leaders in rural Liberia. The goal was to address experience/knowledge asymmetries between community leaders and commercial interests in negotiating mining, logging, land lease, and other resource use contracts.
Reposted by Cyrus Samii, David Darmofal, Ariel White
Annual NYU CESS Experimental Political Science Conference
wp.nyu.edu
JOIN us for this year’s Rebecca Morton conference on experimental political science at NYU! March 6-7. We have a great line up of papers and posters!
Program (scroll down) here: wp.nyu.edu/cesspolitica...
Register (no fee) here: nyu.qualtrics.com/jfe/form/SV_...
Program (scroll down) here: wp.nyu.edu/cesspolitica...
Register (no fee) here: nyu.qualtrics.com/jfe/form/SV_...
Nonsense associations in Markov random fields with pairwise dependence
Yule (1926) identified the issue of "nonsense correlations" in time series data, where dependence within each of two random vectors causes overdispersion -- i.e. variance inflation -- for measures of ...
arxiv.org
I guess I’d still consider this a descendent of common cause (sun exposure) case, although the connection is not so tight. Bhattacharya et al. have a provocative discussion of correlations that seem distinctly non causal, as instances of “Yule’s nonsense correlation” arxiv.org/abs/2402.03249
One could consider shared traits due to a critical evolutionary juncture in causal terms as well, in that the traits are causal descendants of a common mutation/historical shock.
These two papers are nice examples of how, even when one thinks they are doing “mere description” to establish stylized facts, causal reasoning is clarifying. Simply put, anytime control variables come into play, we move into causal questions. Functional form restrictions are the other issue here.
Trend toward secularism is ubiquitous the world over, and yet only in the US do we have this phenomenon of mass middle class male opioid and related deaths. Would seem this is picking up on an ancillary trend?
I like this paper too for the guidance on empirics — has anyone tried to assess evidence on platform effects of voter ID laws?
Very interesting - the one bit that seems mysterious in the abstract is the “new revenues” that sustain profit margins.
Reposted by Cyrus Samii, Flávio Comim, Maria Abreu
Michael Clemens
@mclem.org
· 15d
Striking new work on how gangs shape economic development in El Salvador, Melnikov et al. in Econometrica
Stunted development in gang-controlled territory driven by labor mobility limits: harder to commute/work outside territory, smaller labor mkt, less specialization —>
doi.org/10.3982/ECTA...
Stunted development in gang-controlled territory driven by labor mobility limits: harder to commute/work outside territory, smaller labor mkt, less specialization —>
doi.org/10.3982/ECTA...
Reposted by Cyrus Samii, Max Schaub
My group has a 3-year position available for a PhD student or post-doc interested in India, ML models/data pipelines/python, and crime and protecting children. Must be eligible to work in Germany. DM or email me for details. Formal calls later, trying here first. #poliscisky #datasciencesky
Esoteric conceptual hair splitting is truly my game.
www.mysmu.edu
cf Baltagi 2005 p. 14: "the asymptotic results are performed for N → ∞ and T fixed" www.mysmu.edu/faculty/zlya...
The stats/metrics lit usually distinguishes on basis of the asymptotic regime: panel is fixed T, N -> infty, TSCS is fixed N, T -> infty. if both T and N assumed to go to infty, then not an agreed upon term afaik.
Cyrus Samii
@cdsamii.bsky.social
· Dec 17
Facing seasoned commercial negotiators, community leaders may lose out on rents. Interest-based negotiation training improves skills (measured w/ lab-in-the-field methods) and leads to lower rates of communal forestland exploitation, suggesting increased scrutiny of potential forest use deals.
Reposted by Cyrus Samii
Interest-Based Negotiation over Natural Resources: Experimental Evidence from Liberia
Abstract. We experimentally evaluate whether an interest-based negotiation training for community leaders in Liberia improves their ability to strike benef
doi.org
Forthcoming article "Interest-based Negotiation over Natural Resources: Experimental Evidence from Liberia" Darin Christensen, Alexandra C Hartman @cdsamii.bsky.social and Alessandro Toppeta
@eeanews.bsky.social
Teaching materials available: www.eeassoc.org/teaching-mat...
doi.org/10.1093/jeea...
@eeanews.bsky.social
Teaching materials available: www.eeassoc.org/teaching-mat...
doi.org/10.1093/jeea...
Reposted by Cyrus Samii, David Darmofal
The Causal Revolution: Why Research Design trumps (regression) models for causal claims
YouTube video by Alexander Wuttke
youtu.be
How to explain the “credibility revolution” in a few minutes?
"I" "made" a short video that tries to show why clever (natural) experiments and research design beat pure statistical adjustment for causal claims.
I am genuinely curious what methods people think:
youtu.be/Fv14ktwA31Q?...
"I" "made" a short video that tries to show why clever (natural) experiments and research design beat pure statistical adjustment for causal claims.
I am genuinely curious what methods people think:
youtu.be/Fv14ktwA31Q?...
Cyrus Samii
@cdsamii.bsky.social
· Dec 6
I’ll check it out 👍
Cyrus Samii
@cdsamii.bsky.social
· Dec 5
www.nobelprize.org
Link to Nobel lecture: www.nobelprize.org/uploads/2018...
Cyrus Samii
@cdsamii.bsky.social
· Dec 5
@scottfabramson.bsky.social you also mentioned McFadden. Have a look at his Nobel lecture, pp. 334-5. He does a barefoot (unconstrained) comparison of model predictions (*calibrated* to data from a demand survey) to actual outcomes. The model fitting was not a basis for testing the model.
Cyrus Samii
@cdsamii.bsky.social
· Dec 5
Another thought: let's distinguish model calibration from severe testing (in Mayo's sense). Credibility revolution is a framework for thinking about severity. One can calibrate models on endogenous data, but to test accuracy, use unconstrained credibility revolution methods, a la Todd & Wolpin '06.
Cyrus Samii
@cdsamii.bsky.social
· Dec 5
I think Ashworth et al. offer a compelling way to think about the relationship between theoretical models and empirics. I’d tell students to start there.
Cyrus Samii
@cdsamii.bsky.social
· Dec 4
A great example of combining the strengths of various methods is this paper by Allen et al. (a recent favorite of mine):
www.science.org/doi/10.1126/...
www.science.org/doi/10.1126/...
Quantifying the impact of misinformation and vaccine-skeptical content on Facebook
Low uptake of the COVID-19 vaccine in the US has been widely attributed to social media misinformation. To evaluate this claim, we introduce a framework combining lab experiments (total N = 18,725), c...
www.science.org
Agreed: bsky.app/profile/cdsa...
Cyrus Samii
@cdsamii.bsky.social
· Dec 4
Quantifying the impact of misinformation and vaccine-skeptical content on Facebook
Low uptake of the COVID-19 vaccine in the US has been widely attributed to social media misinformation. To evaluate this claim, we introduce a framework combining lab experiments (total N = 18,725), c...
www.science.org
A great example of combining the strengths of various methods is this paper by Allen et al. (a recent favorite of mine):
www.science.org/doi/10.1126/...
www.science.org/doi/10.1126/...
Matt Graham
@mattgraham.bsky.social
· Dec 4
Survey experiments' popularity in political science is getting attention. What is good and bad about them? How can one maximize their benefits and mitigate their downsides?
Greg Huber and I wrote up our thoughts:
Paywalled: doi.org/10.1016/bs.h...
Free: m-graham.com/papers/Huber...
Greg Huber and I wrote up our thoughts:
Paywalled: doi.org/10.1016/bs.h...
Free: m-graham.com/papers/Huber...
Cyrus Samii
@cdsamii.bsky.social
· Dec 4
One historical note: the original Dehejia and Wahba pscore paper, and particularly the Smith and Todd comment, showed that incorporating pre-treatment outcomes was crucial (in that case to address the “Ashenfelter dip” mean reversion problem).
Cyrus Samii
@cdsamii.bsky.social
· Dec 4
Yes I think the Hazlett and Xu paper did a good job in discussing the convergence.
Cyrus Samii
@cdsamii.bsky.social
· Dec 4
I was reading this Rosenbaum 2010 paper on evidence factors recently and you can see from his example 2 that he had already incorporated a version of this into his non parametric identification logic (matching first differenced data): academic.oup.com/biomet/artic...
Cyrus Samii
@cdsamii.bsky.social
· Dec 4
Other paper I like that had developed similar ideas:
Hazlett & Xu 2018: yiqingxu.org/packages/tjb...
Imai et al. 2023: onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/abs/10.1...
Hazlett & Xu 2018: yiqingxu.org/packages/tjb...
Imai et al. 2023: onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/abs/10.1...