In this week’s episode, Greg and Patrick talk about instrumental variables: what they are, how they help to make causal claims, and the many assumptions and challenges associated with them. Along the way they also mention: Festival of Side Dishes, pilot turkeys, gutsy bagpipes, charter schools, drama kids, RCT wieners, Space Force, licking a rainbow, Duranimals, draft lotteries, shoelace color, buttress, mother-in-lawing, and kazoo duets.
Related Episodes
- S4E03: Two-Stage Least Squares Strikes Back
- S2E14: Control (Variable) Issues
- S1E26: The Internal Validity Pre-Flight Checklist
Suggested Readings
Allison, P. (2018). Instrumental Variables in Structural Equation Models. Blog Post at Statistical Horizons: https://statisticalhorizons.com/iv-in-sem/
Andrews, I., Stock, J. H., & Sun, L. (2019). Weak instruments in instrumental variables regression: Theory and practice. Annual Review of Economics, 11(1), 727-753.
Angrist, J. D., Imbens, G. W., & Rubin, D. B. (1996). Identification of causal effects using instrumental variables. Journal of the American Statistical Association, 91(434), 444-455.
Bollen, K. A. (2012). Instrumental variables in sociology and the social sciences. Annual Review of Sociology, 38(1), 37-72.
Bound, J., Jaeger, D. A., & Baker, R. M. (1995). Problems with instrumental variables estimation when the correlation between the instruments and the endogenous explanatory variable is weak. Journal of the American Statistical Association, 90(430), 443-450.
Maydeu-Olivares, A., Shi, D., & Fairchild, A. J. (2020). Estimating causal effects in linear regression models with observational data: The instrumental variables regression model. Psychological Methods, 25(2), 243–258.
Sargan, J. D. (1958). The estimation of economic relationships using instrumental variables. Econometrica: Journal of the Econometric Society, 393-415.
Sovey, A. J., & Green, D. P. (2011). Instrumental variables estimation in political science: A readers’ guide. American Journal of Political Science, 55(1), 188-200.