Information on the 4th annual workshop, organized by Bernie Black (Northwestern) and Mat McCubbins (USC), follows. This year's workshop is scheduled for June 24-28, 2013 at Northwestern University Law School. As the workshop enrollment is capped at 100, those interested are encouraged to register sooner rather than later.
* * *
We would like to invite
you to attend the fourth (annual) workshop on Research Design for Causal
Inference, sponsored by Northwestern University, the University of Southern
California, and the Society for Empirical Legal Studies. We have recruited a
world-class faculty for the workshop – see below for
details.
Bernie Black
[Northwestern, Law School and Kellogg School of
Management]
Mat McCubbins [USC, Law
School, Marshall School of Business, and Political Science
Department]
Dates and
Location: Monday – Friday, June 24-28, 2013, at Northwestern Law School,
Chicago, Illinois.
Registration: information is available here. Registration is
limited to 100 participants. We filled up quickly last year, so please register
soon. See below for cost and other details.
Overview
of the Causal Inference Workshop: 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 simulations
and quasi-experiments, where part of the sample is “treated” in some way, and
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 kinds of causal inferences one can and cannot
draw from a research design, threats to valid inference, and research designs
that can mitigate those threats.
Most
empirical methods courses begin with the methods. They survey how each method
works, and what assumptions each relies on. We will begin instead with the goal
of causal inference, and discuss how to design research to come closer to that
goal. The methods reflect the goal and are often adapted to the needs of a
particular study. Some of the methods we will discuss are covered in PhD
programs, but rarely in depth, and rarely with a focus on causal inference and
on which methods to prefer for messy, real-world datasets with limited sample
sizes.
Each
day will conclude with a Stata “workshop” where we will illustrate selected
methods with real data and Stata code.
Target
audience: Quantitative empirical researchers (faculty and graduate
students)in social science, including law, political science, economics, many
business-school areas (finance, accounting, management, marketing, etc),
medicine, sociology, education, psychology, etc. – indeed anywhere that causal
inference is important.
Minimum
prior knowledge: We will assume knowledge, at the level
of an upper-level college econometrics or applied statistics course,of how to
run multivariate regressions, including OLS, logit, and probit; familiarity with
basic probability and statistics including conditional and compound
probabilities, confidence intervals, t-statistics, and standard errors; and some
understanding of instrumental variables.
Despite
its modest prerequisites, this course should be suitable for most researchers
with PhD level training and for empirical legal scholars with reasonable but
more limited training. For recent PhD’s, there will be overlap with what you
already know, but much that you don’t know, or don’t know as well as you
should.
Registration and
Workshop Cost
Tuition
is $850; with a discounted rate of $500 for graduate students (PhD, SJD, or law)
and post-doctoral fellows. The workshop fee includes all materials, a temporary
Stata12 license, breakfast, lunch, snacks, and Monday evening reception. All
amounts will increase by $50 on April 1, 2013 (but we’re likely to fill up well
before then). Registration deadline: June 10, 2013. You can register online
at the url above. You can cancel by May 3, 2013 for a 75% refund and by May 31,
2013 for a 50% refund (in each case, less credit card processing fee), but there
are no refunds after that.
For
Northwestern or USC-affiliated attendees, we will charge the regular rate, but
will give you a refund after the workshop to bring your cost down to $300 if you
in fact attend at least a majority of the sessions. We adopted
this policy because if you register and don’t come, you took a spot we could
have provided to someone else.
We
know the workshop is not cheap. We use the funds to pay our speakers and for
meals and other expenses; we don’t pay ourselves.
Questions about the workshop: Please email Bernie Black (bblack@northwestern.edu) or Mat McCubbins (mmccubbins@law.usc.edu) for substantive questions or fee
waiver requests, and Michael Cooper (causalinference@law.northwestern.edu for logistics and
registration questions.
Recent Comments