Empirical Legal Studies

Overlaying Curves--Stata Graphics Code

Lurking in the Stata listserv is a neat little graphics trick that might assist some. The desired graphical objective includes: "How do I combine both [normal curves], so that the normal curves appear on the same graph rather than one by one. Also, please suggest how to make one 'solid' and other 'dashed' with some legend."

Commenters, using Stata's standard "training" dataset ("sysuse auto"), walk through the necessary coding. (Warning: As the comments make clear, getting the coding to run took a few iterations and some corrections to earlier coding suggestions.)

2017 Conference on Empirical Legal Studies in Asia (CELSA)--Extended Submission Deadline

Organized by Yun-chien Chang (Academia Sinica), CELSA, scheduled for June 13 - 15, 2017, at Academia Sinica in Taipei, Taiwan, will include up to seven panels with up to 5 parallel sessions. One of the parallel sessions will be reserved for papers using Asian data. The paper submission deadline has been extended until: 24 February 2017, 11:59pm ET.

An overview of the conference follows: "Empirical legal studies are well established in the United States and are now part of the academic mainstream. In Asia, as compared to other "law and" disciplines, empirical legal studies appear to rise faster and spread wider. For legal empiricists, it is not enough. Both legal academia and policy-makers would benefit from a deeper understanding of the law in action as well as behaviors of courts, legislators, regulated parties, etc. Hosted by Academia Sinica in Taiwan and sponsored by the Society for Empirical Legal Studies (SELS), the first Conference on Empirical Legal Studies in Asia (CELSA) brings together academics from law and other fields who embrace the empirical turn and seek to develop empirical accounts of law and legal institutions in Asia."

For information on how to submit a paper(s), click here. Presenters are permitted to submit--and present--up to two (2) papers at CELSA.

2017 Main Causal Inference Workshop

Northwestern and Duke Universities will hold their 8th annual week-long workshop on Research Design for Causal Inference, at Northwestern University from June 19-23, 2017. Organized by Bernie Black (Northwestern) and Mat McCubbins (Duke), the workshop features an outstanding faculty and is an excellent and efficient way to become acquainted with contemporary approaches for making causal inferences from various kinds of observational and experimental data. Details and registration information can be found here. A brief overview follows:

"Research design for causal inference is at the heart of a 'credibility revolution' in empirical research.  We will cover the design of true randomized experiments and contrast them to natural or quasi experiments and to pure observational studies, where part of the sample is treated in some way, the remainder is a control group, but the researcher controls neither the assignment of cases to treatment and control groups nor administration of the treatment.  We will assess the causal inferences one can draw from a research design, threats to valid inference, and research designs that can mitigate those threats."

Workshop Schedule:

Monday, June 19 (Don Rubin): Introduction to Modern Methods for Causal Inference
Tuesday, June 20 (Alberto Abadie): Designs for “Pure” Observational Studies
Wednesday, June 21 (Alberto Abadie): Instrumental variable methods
Thursday, June 22 (Jens Hainmueller): Panel Data and Difference-in-Differences
Friday morning, June 23 (Jens Hainmueller): Regression Discontinuity
Friday afternoon: Feedback on your own research

CELS 2017 -- Call For Papers

It is with particular pleasure and pride that I note the call for papers for CELS 2017, hosted by Cornell Law School. Details follow.

Paper Submission Deadline: June 23, 2017 (midnight, Eastern Time).

Cornell Law School and the Society for Empirical Legal Studies (SELS) are pleased to announce the 12th Annual Conference on Empirical Legal Studies (CELS) on October 13-14, 2017, in Ithaca, New York.

CELS is a highly regarded interdisciplinary gathering that draws researchers from across the United States and the world, bringing together scholars in law, economics, political science, psychology, policy analysis, and other fields who are interested in the empirical analysis of law and legal institutions. Papers are selected through a peer review process and discussion at the conference includes assigned commentators and audience questions.

CELS will consider empirical papers spanning all areas of empirical legal studies. Authors are encouraged to submit works-in-progress; however, submissions should be completed drafts that include principal results. Submitted papers must be unpublished (and expected to be unpublished at the time of the conference). If accepted, authors will have an opportunity to submit a revised draft prior to the conference for presentation and discussion. Please note that accepted papers will be made available to all conference participants.

To submit a paper, please go to the CELS 2017 Conference page on SSRN (here).

(Do not use the regular SSRN submission site.)

For more information about CELS 2017 please visit the conference website (here).