Reflections on Heckman and Pinto’s “Causal Analysis After Haavelmo”
نویسنده
چکیده
This paper reflects on a recent article by Heckman and Pinto (2013) in which they discuss a formal system, called do-calculus, that operationalizes Haavelmo’s conception of policy intervention. They replace the do-operator with an equivalent operator called “fix,” highlight the capabilities of “fix,” discover limitations in “do,” and inform readers that those limitations disappear in “the Haavelmo approach.” I examine the logic of HP’s paper, its factual basis, and its impact on econometric research and education.
منابع مشابه
Causal Analysis After Haavelmo.
Haavelmo's seminal 1943 and 1944 papers are the first rigorous treatment of causality. In them, he distinguished the definition of causal parameters from their identification. He showed that causal parameters are defined using hypothetical models that assign variation to some of the inputs determining outcomes while holding all other inputs fixed. He thus formalized and made operational Marshal...
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