计量经济分析 = Econometric analysis

When estimating causal effects using observational data, it is desirable to replicate a randomized experiment as closely as possible by obtaining treated and control groups with similar covariate distributions. This goal can often be achieved by choosing well-matched samples of the original treated and control groups, thereby reducing bias due to the covariates. Since the 1970's, work on matching methods has examined how to best choose treated and control subjects for comparison. Matching methods are gaining popularity in fields such as economics, epidemiology, medicine, and political science. However, until now the literature and related advice has been scattered across disciplines. Researchers who are interested in using matching methods-or developing methods related to matching-do not have a single place to turn to learn about past and current research. This paper provides a structure for thinking about matching methods and guidance on their use, coalescing the existing research (both old and new) and providing a summary of where the literature on matching methods is now and where it should be headed.

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Matching Methods for Causal Inference: A Review and a Look Forward

We investigate conditions sufficient for identification of average treatment effects using instrumental variables. First we show that the existence of valid instruments is not sufficient to identify any meaningful average treatment effect. We then establish that the combination of an instrument and a condition on the relation between the instrument and the participation status is sufficient for identification of a local average treatment effect for those who can be induced to change their participation status by changing the value of the instrument. Finally we derive the probability limit of the standard IV estimator under these conditions. It is seen to be a weighted average of local average treatment effects.

Evolution and Rationality Some Recent Game-Theoretic Results. Identification and Estimation of Local Average Treatment Effects

This 1966 paperback edition of a publication which first appeared in 1963 has by now been widely reviewed as a worthy contribution to the sociological study of deviant behavior. Its current appearance as a paperback is a testimonial both to the quality of the work and to the prominence of deviant behavior in this generation. In general the author places deviance in perspective, identifies types of deviant behavior, considers the role of rule makers and enforcers, and some of the problems in studying deviance. In addition, he develops a sequential model of deviance relying on the concept of career, a concept originally developed in studies of occupations. In his study of a particular kind of deviance, the use of marihuana, the author posits and tests systematically an hypothesis about the genesis of marihuana use for pleasure. The hypothesis traces the sequence of changes in individual attitude

Outsiders Studies in the Sociology of Deviance.

Features of neighborhoods or residential environments may affect health and contribute to social and race/ethnic inequalities in health. The study of neighborhood health effects has grown exponentially over the past 15 years. This chapter summarizes key work in this area with a particular focus on chronic disease outcomes (specifically obesity and related risk factors) and mental health (specifically depression and depressive symptoms). Empirical work is classified into two main eras: studies that use census proxies and studies that directly measure neighborhood attributes using a variety of approaches. Key conceptual and methodological challenges in studying neighborhood health effects are reviewed. Existing gaps in knowledge and promising new directions in the field are highlighted.

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Neighborhoods and health.

This article investigates the causal effects of neighborhood on high school dropping out and teenage pregnancy within a counterfactual framework. It shows that when two groups of children, identical at age 10 on observed factors, experience different neighborhoods during adolescence, those in high‐poverty neighborhoods are more likely to drop out of high school and have a teenage pregnancy than those in low‐poverty neighborhoods. Causal inferences from such associations have been plagued by the possibility of selection bias. Using a new method for sensitivity analysis, these effects are shown to be robust to selection bias. Unobserved factors would have to be unreasonably strong to account for the associations between neighborhood and the outcomes.

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Counterfactual Models of Neighborhood Effects: The Effect of Neighborhood Poverty on Dropping Out and Teenage Pregnancy.

Culture is back on the poverty research agenda. Over the past decade, sociologists, demographers, and even economists have begun asking questions about the role of culture in many aspects of poverty and even explicitly explaining the behavior of the low-income population in reference to cultural factors. An example is Prudence Carter (2005), who, based on interviews with poor minority students, argues that whether poor children will work hard at school depends in part on their cultural beliefs about the differences between minorities and the majority. Annette Lareau (2003), after studying poor, working-class, and middleclass families, argues that poor children may do worse over their lifetimes in part because their parents are more committed to “natural growth” than “concerted cultivation” as their cultural model for child rearing. Mario Small (2004), based on fieldwork in a Boston housing complex, argues that poor people may be reluctant to participate in beneficial community activities in part because of how they culturally perceive their neighborhoods. David Harding (2007, 2010), using survey and qualitative interview data on adolescents, argues that the sexual behavior of poor teenagers depends in part on the extent of cultural heterogeneity in their neighborhoods. Economists George Akerlof and Rachel Kranton (2002), relying on the work of other scholars, argue that whether students invest in schooling depends in part on their cultural identity, wherein payoffs will differ among “jocks,” “nerds,” and “burnouts.” And William Julius Wilson, in his latest book (2009a), argues that culture helps explain how poor African Americans respond to the structural conditions they experience.

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Reconsidering Culture and Poverty

Theory suggests that neighborhood effects depend not only on where individuals live today, but also on where they lived in the past. Previous research, however, usually measured neighborhood context only once and did not account for length of residence, thereby understating the detrimental effects of long-term neighborhood disadvantage. This study investigates the effects of duration of exposure to disadvantaged neighborhoods on high school graduation. It follows 4,154 children in the PSID, measuring neighborhood context once per year from age 1 to 17. The analysis overcomes the problem of dynamic neighborhood selection by adapting novel methods of causal inference for time-varying treatments. In contrast to previous analyses, these methods do not "control away" the effect of neighborhood context operating indirectly through time-varying characteristics of the family, and thus they capture the full impact of a lifetime of neighborhood disadvantage. We find that sustained exposure to disadvantaged neighborhoods has a severe impact on high school graduation that is considerably larger than effects reported in prior research. Growing up in the most (compared to the least) disadvantaged quintile of neighborhoods is estimated to reduce the probability of graduation from 96% to 76% for black children, and from 95% to 87% for nonblack children.

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Neighborhood Effects in Temporal Perspective: The Impact of Long-Term Exposure to Concentrated Disadvantage on High School Graduation

As the counterfactual model of causality has increased in popularity, sociologists have returned to matching as a research methodology. In this article, advances over the past two decades in matching estimators are explained, and the practical limitations of matching techniques are emphasized. The authors introduce matching methods by focusing first on ideal scenarios in which stratification and weighting procedures warrant causal inference. Then, they discuss how matching is often undertaken in practice, offering an overview of the most prominent data analysis routines. With four hypothetical examples, they demonstrate how the assumptions behind matching estimators often break down in practice. Even so, the authors argue that matching techniques can be used effectively to strengthen the prosecution of causal questions in sociology.

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Matching Estimators of Causal Effects Prospects and Pitfalls in Theory and Practice

Book Reviews that loosely weaves together ideas of relational subjectivity with the systems theory of Niklas Luhmann—I gave up. The world is in ﬂames. We need good, clear, accurate, and powerful ex- planations for what’s happening so that we can ﬁgure out how to smartly move forward. Maybe a sociologist will read some critical realism and get inspired to produce a brilliant explanation she or he wouldn’t have other- wise. I hope so. But neither of these two books makes a convincing case that critical realism is the royal road to sociological truth. Evicted: Poverty and Proﬁt in the American City. By Matthew Desmond. New York: Crown Publishers, 2016. Pp. xi1420. $28.00. David J. Harding University of California, Berkeley Matthew Desmond’s Evicted is ﬁrst and foremost an ethnography about the daily experiences of poverty with a unique focus on the causes and con- sequences of housing instability and housing quality. Unlike prior poverty ethnographies that focus on a particular neighborhood, this book shadows eight poor families, both black and white, and two landlords who rent apartments, houses, or trailer homes to the poor. Following the experiences of these research subjects over multiple years in Milwaukee reveals in painstaking detail the central importance of eviction to the contemporary experience of being poor. These arguments are buttressed by other data sources as well, including surveys of renters and administrative records from housing court. In short, one cannot read Evicted without coming to the conclusion that eviction and its consequences play a central role in trap- ping individuals and families in poverty. Despite the focus on public housing and housing vouchers in public and academic discussions of housing and poverty, Evicted points out that most of the poor are on their own in the private rental market, one in which there is surprisingly little variation in rents across neighborhoods and almost no options that are anywhere near affordable for a family trying to get by on low-wage work or public assistance. Landlords who rent to such families can rarely count on consistently receiving the full payment of rent, and, as a result, the apartments, houses, and trailers available to such families are typically in chronic disrepair, including broken plumbing, inoperable appliances and furnaces, and broken doors and windows. The state is ab- sent from the market in many ways, with minimal proactive enforcement of building code violations, few resources devoted to affordable housing, and little regulation of rents. Yet when the state does play a role, it is over- whelmingly arrayed against the tenant. Nuisance complaints recorded by the police motivate evictions, sheriff’s deputies execute evictions, child wel- fare agencies take children away when families become homeless or live in unsafe housing, and the complexities of housing courts favor the landlord This content downloaded from 169.229.151.152 on June 30, 2017 10:30:27 AM All use subject to University of Chicago Press Terms and Conditions (http://www.journals.uchicago.edu/t-and-c).

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David J. Harding

Papers

Counterfactual Models of Neighborhood Effects: The Effect of Neighborhood Poverty on Dropping Out and Teenage Pregnancy.

Reconsidering Culture and Poverty

Neighborhood Effects in Temporal Perspective: The Impact of Long-Term Exposure to Concentrated Disadvantage on High School Graduation

Matching Estimators of Causal Effects Prospects and Pitfalls in Theory and Practice

Evicted: Poverty and Profit in the American City