22:010:680 - Current Topics/Accounting Research - Fall 94

Review of Statistical Methodology

Instructor: Glenn Shafer (gshafer@andromeda)

September 13, 1994

Books available at New Jersey Books:

Modeling Experimental and Observational Data, by Clifford E. Lunneborg. Duxbury Press, 1994.

Making It Count: The Improvement of Social Research and Theory, by Stanley Lieberson. University of California Press, 1985.

This semester, this course will review statistical methodology, with an emphasis on causal inference. The coursework will include weekly homework assignments and a final examination.

Modeling Experimental and Observational Data (MEOD) is a textbook for a second course in statistics for graduate students in the social sciences. We will cover this book (probably beginning with Chapter 7) at a pace depending on the background of the students.

Making It Count (MIC) is not a textbook, and we will cover it more quickly. It does have some technical material, however, which we will look at carefully.

Assignment for Next Week (September 19):

1. Read Chapter 7 of MEOD, reviewing earlier chapters if necessary.

2. Read Chapters 1 and 2 of MIC.

Please come to class prepared to discuss this material and any difficulties you had with it.

Find an article in the accounting literature, preferably one that interests you, that uses observational controls. On the basis of Lieberson's discussion, can you identify the causal assumptions needed to make the article's analysis valid? On the basis of your knowledge of the subject matter, can you assess the plausibility of these assumptions?

Next week's assignment will include some exercises from MEOD.

In addition to MEOD and MIC, I expect we will look at some of the following methodological articles.

Cook, R. Dennis (1980). "Smoking and Lung Cancer." R.A. Fisher: An Appreciation, S.E. Fienberg and D.V. Hinkley, eds. Springer-Verlag Lecture Notes in Statistics, No. 1, pp. 182-191.

Cornfield, J., et al. (1959). "Smoking and Lung Cancer: Recent Evidence and a Discussion of Some Questions." Journal of the National Cancer Institute 22, 173-203.

Freedman, D.A. (1987). "As Others See Us: A Case Study in Path Analysis." (With comments by Keith Hope, Christopher H. Achen, P.M. Bentler, Norman Cliff, John Fox, Samuel Karlin, Bengt O. Muthen, David Rogosa, Thomas J. Rothenberg, Eugene Seneta, Herman Wold.) Journal of Educational Statistics 12 101-223.

Freedman, David A. (1991). "Statistical Models and Shoe Leather." With discussion by Richard A. Berk, Hubert M. Blalock, Jr., William M. Mason. Pp. 291-358 in Sociological Methodology 1991.

Goldman, Noreen (1994). "Social factors and health: The causation-selection issue revisited." Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences USA 91, 1251-1255.

Hastie, Reid (1984). "Causes and Effects of Causal Attribution." Journal of Personality and Social Psychology 46 44-56.

Hilton, Denis J. (1990). "Conversational Processes and Causal Explanation." Psychological Bulletin 107 65-81.

Holland, P.W. (1986). "Statistics and Causal Inference (with discussion)." Journal of the American Statistical Association 81, 945-970.

Kang, K.M., and Seneta, E. (1980). "Path analysis: An exposition." In P.R. Krishnaiah (Ed.), Developments in Statistics, Vol. 3, 217-246.

Marini, M.M., and B. Singer (1988). "Causality in the Social Sciences." Pp. 347-409 in Sociological Methodology 1988.

Pearl, Judea, and Thomas Verma (1993). "A Theory of Inferred Causation." Principles of Knowledge Representation and Reasoning: Proceeding of the Second International Conference, J.A. Allen, R. Fikes, and E. Sandewall, eds. Morgan Kaufmann, San Mateo, CA, pp. 441-452.

Robins, James (1987). "A Graphical Approach to the Identification and Estimation of Causal Parameters in Mortality Studies with Sustained Exposure Periods." Journal of Chronic Diseases 40, Supplement 2 139S-161S.

Shultz, Thomas R., et al. (1986). "Selection of Causal Rules." Child Development 57 143-152.

Stolley, Paul D. (1991). "When Genius Errs: R.A. Fisher and the Lung Cancer Controversy." American Journal of Epidemiology 133, 416-425.

Wainer, Howard (1991). "Adjusting for Differential Base Rates: Lord's Paradox Again." Psychological Bulletin. 109 147-151.

I will also use parts of my forthcoming book:

The Art of Causal Conjecture, by Glenn Shafer. MIT Press, 1995.