Publications by Year: 2006

2006
The Dangers of Extreme Counterfactuals
Gary King and Langche Zeng. 2006. “The Dangers of Extreme Counterfactuals.” Political Analysis, 14, Pp. 131–159.Abstract
We address the problem that occurs when inferences about counterfactuals – predictions, "what if" questions, and causal effects – are attempted far from the available data. The danger of these extreme counterfactuals is that substantive conclusions drawn from statistical models that fit the data well turn out to be based largely on speculation hidden in convenient modeling assumptions that few would be willing to defend. Yet existing statistical strategies provide few reliable means of identifying extreme counterfactuals. We offer a proof that inferences farther from the data are more model-dependent, and then develop easy-to-apply methods to evaluate how model-dependent our answers would be to specified counterfactuals. These methods require neither sensitivity testing over specified classes of models nor evaluating any specific modeling assumptions. If an analysis fails the simple tests we offer, then we know that substantive results are sensitive to at least some modeling choices that are not based on empirical evidence.
Article
Death by Survey: Estimating Adult Mortality without Selection Bias from Sibling Survival Data
Emmanuela Gakidou and Gary King. 2006. “Death by Survey: Estimating Adult Mortality without Selection Bias from Sibling Survival Data.” Demography, 43, Pp. 569–585.Abstract
The widely used methods for estimating adult mortality rates from sample survey responses about the survival of siblings, parents, spouses, and others depend crucially on an assumption that we demonstrate does not hold in real data. We show that when this assumption is violated – so that the mortality rate varies with sibship size – mortality estimates can be massively biased. By using insights from work on the statistical analysis of selection bias, survey weighting, and extrapolation problems, we propose a new and relatively simple method of recovering the mortality rate with both greatly reduced potential for bias and increased clarity about the source of necessary assumptions.
Article
Ecological Inference
Gary King, Ori Rosen, and Martin Tanner. 2006. “Ecological Inference.” In The New Palgrave Dictionary of Economics, edited by Larry Blume and Steven N. Durlauf, 2nd ed. London: Palgrave.Abstract
Dictionary entry on the definition of "ecological inference," and a brief summary of the history of ecological inference research.
Chapter
The Effect of War on the Supreme Court
Lee Epstein, Daniel E. Ho, Gary King, and Jeffrey A. Segal. 2006. “The Effect of War on the Supreme Court.” In Principles and Practice in American Politics: Classic and Contemporary Readings, edited by Samuel Kernell and Steven S. Smith, 3rd ed. Washington, D.C. Congressional Quarterly Press.Abstract

Does the U.S. Supreme Court curtail rights and liberties when the nation’s security is under threat? In hundreds of articles and books, and with renewed fervor since September 11, 2001, members of the legal community have warred over this question. Yet, not a single large-scale, quantitative study exists on the subject. Using the best data available on the causes and outcomes of every civil rights and liberties case decided by the Supreme Court over the past six decades and employing methods chosen and tuned especially for this problem, our analyses demonstrate that when crises threaten the nation’s security, the justices are substantially more likely to curtail rights and liberties than when peace prevails. Yet paradoxically, and in contradiction to virtually every theory of crisis jurisprudence, war appears to affect only cases that are unrelated to the war. For these cases, the effect of war and other international crises is so substantial, persistent, and consistent that it may surprise even those commentators who long have argued that the Court rallies around the flag in times of crisis. On the other hand, we find no evidence that cases most directly related to the war are affected. We attempt to explain this seemingly paradoxical evidence with one unifying conjecture: Instead of balancing rights and security in high stakes cases directly related to the war, the Justices retreat to ensuring the institutional checks of the democratic branches. Since rights-oriented and process-oriented dimensions seem to operate in different domains and at different times, and often suggest different outcomes, the predictive factors that work for cases unrelated to the war fail for cases related to the war. If this conjecture is correct, federal judges should consider giving less weight to legal principles outside of wartime but established during wartime, and attorneys should see it as their responsibility to distinguish cases along these lines.

Article
Publication, Publication
Gary King. 2006. “Publication, Publication.” PS: Political Science and Politics, 39, Pp. 119–125. Continuing updates to this paperAbstract

I show herein how to write a publishable paper by beginning with the replication of a published article. This strategy seems to work well for class projects in producing papers that ultimately get published, helping to professionalize students into the discipline, and teaching them the scientific norms of the free exchange of academic information. I begin by briefly revisiting the prominent debate on replication our discipline had a decade ago and some of the progress made in data sharing since.

Article
Zelig: Everyone's Statistical Software
Kosuke Imai, Gary King, and Olivia Lau. 2006. “Zelig: Everyone's Statistical Software”.