Gary King is the Weatherhead University Professor at Harvard University. He also serves as Director of the Institute for Quantitative Social Science. He and his research group develop and apply empirical methods in many areas of social science research. Full bio and CV

## Research Areas

• Evaluating Social Security Forecasts
The accuracy of U.S. Social Security Administration (SSA) demographic and financial forecasts is crucial for the solvency of its Trust Funds, government programs comprising greater than 50% of all federal government expenditures, industry decision making, and the evidence base of many scholarly articles. Forecasts are also essential for scoring policy proposals, put forward by both political parties. Because SSA makes public little replication information, and uses ad hoc, qualitative, and antiquated statistical forecasting methods, no one in or out of government has been able to produce fully independent alternative forecasts or policy scorings. Yet, no systematic evaluation of SSA forecasts has ever been published by SSA or anyone else. We show that SSA's forecasting errors were approximately unbiased until about 2000, but then began to grow quickly, with increasingly overconfident uncertainty intervals. Moreover, the errors all turn out to be in the same potentially dangerous direction, each making the Social Security Trust Funds look healthier than they actually are. We also discover the cause of these findings with evidence from a large number of interviews we conducted with participants at every level of the forecasting and policy processes. We show that SSA's forecasting procedures meet all the conditions the modern social-psychology and statistical literatures demonstrate make bias likely. When those conditions mixed with potent new political forces trying to change Social Security and influence the forecasts, SSA's actuaries hunkered down trying hard to insulate themselves from the intense political pressures. Unfortunately, this otherwise laudable resistance to undue influence, along with their ad hoc qualitative forecasting models, led them to also miss important changes in the input data such as retirees living longer lives, and drawing more benefits, than predicted by simple extrapolations. We explain that solving this problem involves using (a) removing human judgment where possible, by using formal statistical methods -- via the revolution in data science and big data; (b) instituting formal structural procedures when human judgment is required -- via the revolution in social psychological research; and (c) requiring transparency and data sharing to catch errors that slip through -- via the revolution in data sharing & replication.An article at Barron's about our work.
Proof that previously used estimators of electoral incumbency advantage were biased, and a new unbiased estimator. Also, the first systematic demonstration that constituency service by legislators increases the incumbency advantage.
• Information Control by Authoritarian Governments
• Mexican Health Care Evaluation
An evaluation of the Mexican Seguro Popular program (designed to extend health insurance and regular and preventive medical care, pharmaceuticals, and health facilities to 50 million uninsured Mexicans), one of the world's largest health policy reforms of the last two decades. Our evaluation features a new design for field experiments that is more robust to the political interventions and implementation errors that have ruined many similar previous efforts; new statistical methods that produce more reliable and efficient results using fewer resources, assumptions, and data, as well as standard errors that are as much as 600% smaller; and an implementation of these methods in the largest randomized health policy experiment to date. (See the Harvard Gazette story on this project.)
• Presidency Research; Voting Behavior
Resolution of the paradox of why polls are so variable over time during presidential campaigns even though the vote outcome is easily predictable before it starts. Also, a resolution of a key controversy over absentee ballots during the 2000 presidential election; and the methodology of small-n research on executives.
• Informatics and Data Sharing
Replication Standards New standards, protocols, and software for citing, sharing, analyzing, archiving, preserving, distributing, cataloging, translating, disseminating, naming, verifying, and replicating scholarly research data and analyses. Also includes proposals to improve the norms of data sharing and replication in science.
• International Conflict
Methods for coding, analyzing, and forecasting international conflict and state failure. Evidence that the causes of conflict, theorized to be important but often found to be small or ephemeral, are indeed tiny for the vast majority of dyads, but are large, stable, and replicable wherever the ex ante probability of conflict is large.
• Legislative Redistricting
The definition of partisan symmetry as a standard for fairness in redistricting; methods and software for measuring partisan bias and electoral responsiveness; discussion of U.S. Supreme Court rulings about this work. Evidence that U.S. redistricting reduces bias and increases responsiveness, and that the electoral college is fair; applications to legislatures, primaries, and multiparty systems.
• Mortality Studies
Methods for forecasting mortality rates (overall or for time series data cross-classified by age, sex, country, and cause); estimating mortality rates in areas without vital registration; measuring inequality in risk of death; applications to US mortality, the future of the Social Security, armed conflict, heart failure, and human security.
Publications and other projects designed to improve teaching, learning, and university administration, as well as broader writings on the future of the social sciences.
• Automated Text Analysis
Automated and computer-assisted methods of extracting, organizing, understanding, conceptualizing, and consuming knowledge from massive quantities of unstructured text.
• Anchoring Vignettes (for interpersonal incomparability)
Methods for interpersonal incomparability, when respondents (from different cultures, genders, countries, or ethnic groups) understand survey questions in different ways; for developing theoretical definitions of complicated concepts apparently definable only by example (i.e., "you know it when you see it").
• Causal Inference
Methods for detecting and reducing model dependence (i.e., when minor model changes produce substantively different inferences) in inferring causal effects and other counterfactuals. Matching methods; "politically robust" and cluster-randomized experimental designs; causal bias decompositions.
• Event Counts and Durations
Statistical models to explain or predict how many events occur for each fixed time period, or the time between events. An application to cabinet dissolution in parliamentary democracies which united two previously warring scholarly literature. Other applications to international relations and U.S. Supreme Court appointments.
• Ecological Inference
Inferring individual behavior from group-level data: The first approach to incorporate both unit-level deterministic bounds and cross-unit statistical information, methods for 2x2 and larger tables, Bayesian model averaging, applications to elections, software.
• Missing Data & Measurement Error
Statistical methods to accommodate missing information in data sets due to scattered unit nonresponse, missing variables, or values or variables measured with error. Easy-to-use algorithms and software for multiple imputation and multiple overimputation for surveys, time series, and time series cross-sectional data. Applications to electoral, and other compositional, data.
• Qualitative Research
How the same unified theory of inference underlies quantitative and qualitative research alike; scientific inference when quantification is difficult or impossible; research design; empirical research in legal scholarship.
• Rare Events
How to save 99% of your data collection costs; bias corrections for logistic regression in estimating probabilities and causal effects in rare events data; estimating base probabilities or any quantity from case-control data; automated coding of events.
• Survey Research
How surveys work and a variety of methods to use with surveys. Surveys for estimating death rates, why election polls are so variable when the vote is so predictable, and health inequality.
• Unifying Statistical Analysis
Development of a unified approach to statistical modeling, inference, interpretation, presentation, analysis, and software; integrated with most of the other projects listed here.

# How to conquer partisan gerrymandering

Gary King and Robert X Browning. 12/26/2017. “How to conquer partisan gerrymandering.” Boston Globe (Op-Ed), 292 , 179 , Pp. A10. Publisher's VersionAbstract
PARTISAN GERRYMANDERING has long been reviled for thwarting the will of the voters. Yet while voters are acting disgusted, the US Supreme Court has only discussed acting — declaring they have the constitutional right to fix the problem, but doing nothing. But as better data and computer algorithms are now making gerrymandering increasingly effective, continuing to sidestep the issue could do permanent damage to American democracy. In Gill v. Whitford, the soon-to-be-decided challenge to Wisconsin’s 2011 state Assembly redistricting plan, the court could finally fix the problem for the whole country. Judging from the oral arguments, the key to the case is whether the court endorses the concept of “partisan symmetry,” a specific standard for treating political parties equally in allocating legislative seats based on voting.

# Edited transcript of a talk on Partisan Symmetry at the 'Redistricting and Representation Forum'

Gary King. Forthcoming. “Edited transcript of a talk on Partisan Symmetry at the 'Redistricting and Representation Forum'.” Bulletin of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, Winter, Pp. 55-58.Abstract

The origin, meaning, estimation, and application of the concept of partisan symmetry in legislative redistricting, and the justiciability of partisan gerrymandering. An edited transcript of a talk at the “Redistricting and Representation Forum,” American Academy of Arts & Sciences, Cambridge, MA 11/8/2017.

Here also is a video of the original talk.

# How the news media activate public expression and influence national agendas

Gary King, Benjamin Schneer, and Ariel White. 11/10/2017. “How the news media activate public expression and influence national agendas.” Science, 358, Pp. 776-780. Publisher's VersionAbstract

We demonstrate that exposure to the news media causes Americans to take public stands on specific issues, join national policy conversations, and express themselves publicly—all key components of democratic politics—more often than they would otherwise. After recruiting 48 mostly small media outlets, we chose groups of these outlets to write and publish articles on subjects we approved, on dates we randomly assigned. We estimated the causal effect on proximal measures, such as website pageviews and Twitter discussion of the articles’ specific subjects, and distal ones, such as national Twitter conversation in broad policy areas. Our intervention increased discussion in each broad policy area by approximately $$\approx 62.7\%$$ (relative to a day’s volume), accounting for 13,166 additional posts over the treatment week, with similar effects across population subgroups.

On the Science website: AbstractReprintFull text, and a comment (by Matthew Gentzkow) "Small media, big impact".

# How to Measure Legislative District Compactness If You Only Know it When You See It

Aaron Kaufman, Gary King, and Mayya Komisarchik. Forthcoming. “How to Measure Legislative District Compactness If You Only Know it When You See It.” American Journal of Political Science.Abstract

To deter gerrymandering, many state constitutions require legislative districts to be "compact." Yet, the law offers few precise definitions other than "you know it when you see it," which effectively implies a common understanding of the concept. In contrast, academics have shown that compactness has multiple dimensions and have generated many conflicting measures. We hypothesize that both are correct -- that compactness is complex and multidimensional, but a common understanding exists across people. We develop a survey to elicit this understanding, with high reliability (in data where the standard paired comparisons approach fails). We create a statistical model that predicts, with high accuracy, solely from the geometric features of the district, compactness evaluations by judges and public officials responsible for redistricting, among others. We also offer compactness data from our validated measure for 20,160 state legislative and congressional districts, as well as software to compute this measure from any district.

Winner of the 2018 Robert H Durr Award from the MPSA.

# Urban observatories: City data can inform decision theory

Aristides A. N. Patrinos, Hannah Bayer, Paul W. Glimcher, Steven Koonin, Miyoung Chun, and Gary King. 3/19/2015. “Urban observatories: City data can inform decision theory.” Nature, 519, Pp. 291. Publisher's VersionAbstract

Data are being collected on human behaviour in cities such as London, New York, Singapore and Shanghai, with a view to meeting city dwellers' needs more effectively. Incorporating decision-making theory into analyses of the data from these 'urban observatories' would yield further valuable information.

# Effectiveness of the WHO Safe Childbirth Checklist Program in Reducing Severe Maternal, Fetal, and Newborn Harm: Study Protocol for a Matched-Pair, Cluster Randomized Controlled Trial in Uttar Pradesh, India

Katherine Semrau, Lisa R. Hirschhorn, Bhala Kodkany, Jonathan Spector, Danielle E. Tuller, Gary King, Stuart Lisptiz, Narender Sharma, Vinay P. Singh, Bharath Kumar, Neelam Dhingra-Kumar, Rebecca Firestone, Vishwajeet Kumar, and Atul Gawande. 2016. “Effectiveness of the WHO Safe Childbirth Checklist Program in Reducing Severe Maternal, Fetal, and Newborn Harm: Study Protocol for a Matched-Pair, Cluster Randomized Controlled Trial in Uttar Pradesh, India.” Trials, 576, 17, Pp. 1-10. Publisher's VersionAbstract

Background: Effective, scalable strategies to improve maternal, fetal, and newborn health and reduce preventable morbidity and mortality are urgently needed in low- and middle-income countries. Building on the successes of previous checklist-based programs, the World Health Organization (WHO) and partners led the development of the Safe Childbirth Checklist (SCC), a 28-item list of evidence-based practices linked with improved maternal and newborn outcomes. Pilot-testing of the Checklist in Southern India demonstrated dramatic improvements in adherence by health workers to essential childbirth-related practices (EBPs). The BetterBirth Trial seeks to measure the effectiveness of SCC impact on EBPs, deaths, and complications at a larger scale.

Methods: This matched-pair, cluster-randomized controlled, adaptive trial will be conducted in 120 facilities across 24 districts in Uttar Pradesh, India. Study sites, identified according to predefined eligibility criteria, were matched by measured covariates before randomization. The intervention, the SCC embedded in a quality improvement program, consists of leadership engagement, a 2-day educational launch of the SCC, and support through placement of a trained peer “coach” to provide supportive supervision and real-time data feedback over an 8-month period with decreasing intensity. A facility-based childbirth quality coordinator is trained and supported to drive sustained behavior change after the BetterBirth team leaves the facility. Study participants are birth attendants and women and their newborns who present to the study facilities for childbirth at 60 intervention and 60 control sites. The primary outcome is a composite measure including maternal death, maternal severe morbidity, stillbirth, and newborn death, occurring within 7 days after birth. The sample size (n = 171,964) was calculated to detect a 15% reduction in the primary outcome. Adherence by health workers to EBPs will be measured in a subset of births (n = 6000). The trial will be conducted in close collaboration with key partners including the Governments of India and Uttar Pradesh, the World Health Organization, an expert Scientific Advisory Committee, an experienced local implementing organization (Population Services International, PSI), and frontline facility leaders and workers

Discussion: If effective, the WHO Safe Childbirth Checklist program could be a powerful health facilitystrengthening intervention to improve quality of care and reduce preventable harm to women and newborns, with millions of potential beneficiaries.

Trial registration: BetterBirth Study Protocol dated: 13 February 2014; ClinicalTrials.gov: NCT02148952; Universal Trial Number: U1111-1131-5647.

# booc.io: An Education System with Hierarchical Concept Maps

Michail Schwab, Hendrik Strobelt, James Tompkin, Colin Fredericks, Connor Huff, Dana Higgins, Anton Strezhnev, Mayya Komisarchik, Gary King, and Hanspeter Pfister. Forthcoming. “booc.io: An Education System with Hierarchical Concept Maps.” IEEE Transactions on Visualization and Computer Graphics.Abstract

Information hierarchies are difficult to express when real-world space or time constraints force traversing the hierarchy in linear presentations, such as in educational books and classroom courses. We present booc.io, which allows linear and non-linear presentation and navigation of educational concepts and material. To support a breadth of material for each concept, booc.io is Web based, which allows adding material such as lecture slides, book chapters, videos, and LTIs. A visual interface assists the creation of the needed hierarchical structures. The goals of our system were formed in expert interviews, and we explain how our design meets these goals. We adapt a real-world course into booc.io, and perform introductory qualitative evaluation with students.

All writings

## Presentations

All presentations

• «
• 2 of 2
•
All writings