tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5558726.post113086006753479613..comments2024-02-20T17:40:21.618-05:00Comments on jeremy freese's weblog: excerpted from my causalist manifestojeremyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12755662766163119607noreply@blogger.comBlogger10125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5558726.post-1130987821003408092005-11-02T22:17:00.000-05:002005-11-02T22:17:00.000-05:00Chris: I appreciate your comments, as always. Wi...Chris: I appreciate your comments, as always. With regard to your point #1, I have many thoughts on fixed-effects estimators with regard to two-sided selection processes like marriage and employment (I don't know to what extent, when the literature talks about these things, they talk about the inferential problems posed by two-sided selection). Maybe I'll get a chance to post sprawlingly on that, but of course blogging is what it is in terms of our ability to actually get the chance to articulate what we want to articulate.<BR/><BR/>As to your point #2, from my standpoint--and again I'm thinking about all this from an innocent outsider's purview--it's not the lack of plausibility of the voting-crime connection, necessarily, but more that once there are specific ideas about what the voting-crime connections is caused by, then suddenly it's easier to pin down the implications of what we would expect to see in observational data.<BR/><BR/>As to #3, I think this is a great idea, and a much more clearly defined treatment effect than voting is anyway, especially since it seems from the way you talk about it like it's not really voting per se anyway but the civic integration manifested in the participation in voting.<BR/><BR/>Brayden: I just see 2SLS as an estimation strategy for a class of solutions that rely upon a search for sources of exogenous variation in the causal variable, which is what I was trying to get at by talking about presidential year elections.jeremyhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/12755662766163119607noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5558726.post-1130958148948422222005-11-02T14:02:00.000-05:002005-11-02T14:02:00.000-05:00The act of voting belies civic reintegration or a ...The act of voting belies civic reintegration or a sense of civic responsibility in an ex-felon, but as a measure of that responsibility, it seems largely unsatisfactory. There are definitely exogeneity issues relating to whether or not people vote, so recidivism relating to the right to vote is probably a more credible statistic relationship.<BR/><BR/>That's my best interpretation of the problem and situation, but I'm just a layman, so my grasp on this problem could be poor.johnhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/08393977870138431897noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5558726.post-1130944542941399102005-11-02T10:15:00.000-05:002005-11-02T10:15:00.000-05:00jeremy, thanks for the kind words and attention! i...jeremy, thanks for the kind words and attention! i'll respond in some detail when i post or send the new paper (i feel worse about not writing it yet than you do about not reading it yet). a couple quick notes, though:<BR/><BR/>1. you don't say much about timing or harnessing variation <I>within-persons</I> in voting and crime. a standard approach in the employment and crime literature is to estimate a fixed effects model that shows reduced crime during periods of employment. my guess is that you wouldn't buy that employment (or marriage, or...) is causal in this scenario. what if voting in the last biennial election is a strong time-varying covariate -- net of the fixed effect that should be absorbing stable differences across persons? <BR/><BR/>2. i think part of the reason for pessimism on this front relates to theory. i'll have to do a better job establishing the plausibility of a voting-crime connection. tocqueville, mill and expressivist theories of voting offer some help(virtue through civic participation), as does life course criminology and classic deviance work on insiders and outsiders. in any case, lacking a tight conceptual argument, it is hard to see the mechanism for such a connection.<BR/><BR/>3. as i noted yesterday, i'd like to manipulate the opportunity for civic reintegration experimentally with a "practical citizenship" prison intervention. prisoners assigned to treatment status would do some sort of inside/outside voting and service for community-based organizations or politicians that interest them. those assigned to the treatment status should be more likely to vote upon release (my intermediate outcome) and we could learn whether they'd be less likely to recidivate. i know that this wouldn't give the treatment effect of the physical act of voting, but i think it would give the treatment effect of a general "civic reintegration" manipulation with random assignment helping to assure comparability of t and c prior to the intervention. even with randomization, i could still use covariate adjustment for time-varying work and family effects (presuming that the experiment also affected these processes) and incomplete randomization. <BR/><BR/>of course, i'm interested in the effects of voting (that is, "voting per se") and i realize that i might be a lone pollyanna on the possibilities of "civic reintegration." ultimately, though, i want to identify ways to reduce crime and increase public safety. helping former criminals become stakeholders in the citizenry <I>might</I> offer a low-risk, low-cost means for attaining this goal. if the idea bombs with the application of successively more stringent tests, i'll keep looking (though civic reintegration seems pretty conservative compared to some ideas i'm kicking around now).christopher uggenhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/04403907582315662929noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5558726.post-1130942626552424732005-11-02T09:43:00.000-05:002005-11-02T09:43:00.000-05:00I agree fully that if voting reduces recidivism, t...I agree fully that if voting reduces recidivism, then giving ex-felons the right to vote would reduce recidivism. It just doesn't seem obvious to me at all that this is supposed to be the reasoning behind giving ex-felons the right to vote. It seems a lot more likely, if there is any causal connection, that it would be due to the "civic pride and acceptance" effect of saying "you're now a full member of society again" by giving them the right to vote. Even if they don't actually exercise it, just like large numbers of law-abiding citizens.Anonymousnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5558726.post-1130932169552260432005-11-02T06:49:00.000-05:002005-11-02T06:49:00.000-05:00Allen: The causal/casual mixup is everywhere, esp...Allen: The causal/casual mixup is everywhere, especially if you try to raise awareness of causal inference problems by trying to sponsor "causal Friday" events.<BR/><BR/>As for the matter of question-shifting, it seems to me that if one demonstrated that voting was truly causally associated with lower recidivism, then it would seem a likely (but not certain) bet that extending voting rights would be associated with lower recidivism. The inference doesn't go the other way, though.jeremyhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/12755662766163119607noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5558726.post-1130906333324951322005-11-01T23:38:00.000-05:002005-11-01T23:38:00.000-05:00Well, three questions, then, if you're going to ge...Well, three questions, then, if you're going to get all quantitative about it.Anonymousnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5558726.post-1130906261120585612005-11-01T23:37:00.000-05:002005-11-01T23:37:00.000-05:00I have two questions:1) Are Frankie and Johnnie al...I have two questions:<BR/><BR/>1) Are Frankie and Johnnie also lovers?<BR/><BR/>2) Do your students constantly misread "causal" as "casual", or is that just something that happens at places like Southeast Missouri State, and not at Hahvahd? <BR/><BR/>3) Why is most of your post about whether the act of voting affects the probability of recidivism, when it appears that the issue is whether giving people the right to vote affects the probability of recidivism? Isn't the section titled "And, all the while, the question has actually shifted" actually the only part that addresses the question itself?Anonymousnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5558726.post-1130899559728287782005-11-01T21:45:00.000-05:002005-11-01T21:45:00.000-05:00Well, I'm certainly no genius, and sooner you disa...Well, I'm certainly no genius, and sooner you disabuse yourself of that, the better for all of us. But I do have all kinds of trouble sleeping; it is, as I often say, the bane of my existence.jeremyhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/12755662766163119607noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5558726.post-1130892995537823812005-11-01T19:56:00.000-05:002005-11-01T19:56:00.000-05:00I've decided that you're either a genius or someon...I've decided that you're either a genius or someone who never sleeps. Perhaps both.Anonymousnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5558726.post-1130891846199745092005-11-01T19:37:00.000-05:002005-11-01T19:37:00.000-05:00Wednesday 12:01 AM?Wednesday 12:01 AM?Anonymousnoreply@blogger.com