POLI 210 Lecture Notes - Lecture 4: Dependent And Independent Variables, Human Capital, Statistical Model

• School: McGill University
• Department: Political Science
• Course: POLI 210
• Professor: Dietlind Stolle

Document Summary

Poli 210- lecture 4: causality and causal inference: a multi-method perspective: the problem of causality, mixed methods in political science. It"s easy to (cid:272)he(cid:272)k (cid:449)hethe(cid:396) x a(cid:374)d y (cid:373)o(cid:448)e togethe(cid:396). It"s ha(cid:396)de(cid:396) to test (cid:449)hethe(cid:396) x has a (cid:272)ausal effe(cid:272)t o(cid:374) y. Individuals going to the hospital might be more likely to asses their health negatively. Buenos aires high crime, 1/3 of households. Hiring a guard increases the probability of victimization. People who hire guards are more concerned about crime and more likely to recall victimization experience. Causal effect is the difference in potential outcome due to treatment: However, we typically observe only one state of the world: An individual cannot go and not go to the hospital at the same time. A household cannot hire and not hire a guard at the same time. The fu(cid:374)da(cid:373)e(cid:374)tal p(cid:396)o(cid:271)le(cid:373) of (cid:272)ausal i(cid:374)fe(cid:396)e(cid:374)(cid:272)e is that (cid:449)e do(cid:374)"t k(cid:374)o(cid:449) the (cid:272)ou(cid:374)te(cid:396)fa(cid:272)tual.