Know Your Question
Over the past five weeks, we’ve been talking about what it takes to make a credible causal claim. But here’s something worth stepping back on: causa...
Author: Miguel
Two Kinds of Slow
If you work with large administrative datasets or run simulation models, you’ve probably lost hours to slow code. Usually the fix is obvious in hindsight,...
A framework for causal thinking in your work
This series was never about learning three frameworks. It was about changing how you engage with the causal claims that flow through your work every day: the on...
What do you do when there’s no experiment to run?
Over the past three weeks we’ve built a toolkit. Rubin gave us the language of potential outcomes and the counterfactual. Pearl gave us DAGs to map our as...
Draw your assumptions before you run your model
We’ve established that causal inference requires a counterfactual, and that every analytical strategy is a way of constructing a credible stand-in for wha...
The question behind every causal claim you’ve ever made
If your regression coefficient is not a causal effect, what is a causal effect? Here’s the answer, and it’s deceptively simple. The causal...
Your regression coefficient is not a causal effect
Quick thought experiment. You regress earnings on years of education and get a positive coefficient. More education → higher earnings. Done. Done? Now add paren...