2013 Advanced Causal Inference Workshop
We would like to invite you to attend our first "advanced" workshop on Research Design for Causal Inference. The workshop builds on our "main" workshop. Both are sponsored by Northwestern University, University of Southern California, the Society for Empirical Legal Studies.
Monday-Wednesday, August 12-14, 2013, at Northwestern Law School, Chicago, IL
Our regular "Main" Workshop on Research Design for Causal Inference will be held this year on June 24-28, 2013.
Teaching Faculty and Organizers | Registration | Workshop Schedule | Workshop Readings (login required) | Hotels
Workshop Overview
There continues to be rapid change in the "research frontier" for causal inference, and in what constitutes best practice (normally somewhat inside the frontier). The goal for the advanced workshop is to provide an in-depth discussion of selected topics in causal inference that won’t fit in the main workshop. Our target audience is empirical researchers (faculty and graduate students) who are familiar with the fundamentals of causal inference (from our main workshop, a graduate-level causal inference class, or their own research), who want to extend their knowledge. Most methods are not field-specific. Thus, we expect the workshop to be suitable for researchers in a wide variety of areas, including law, political science, economics, many business-school areas (finance, accounting, management, marketing, etc), medicine, sociology, education, psychology, etc. – indeed anywhere that careful causal inference is important.
Teaching Faculty
We are fortunate to have recruited outstanding experts in causal research design to teach the workshop sessions.
- Donald B. Rubin (Harvard University)
John L. Loeb Professor of Statistics, Harvard University. His work on what today is often called the "Rubin Causal Model" is central to modern understanding of when one can and cannot infer causation from regression. Principal research interests: statistical methods for causal inference; Bayesian statistics; analysis of incomplete data. Wikipedia - Ben Hansen (University of Michigan)
Associate Professor of Statistics, University of Michigan, and Faculty Associate at the University of Michigan Institute for Social Research. Principal research interests: causal inference in observational studies, design-based inference for randomized experiments, statistical computing; applications to health outcomes research, social epidemiology, political science and education evaluation. CV (pdf) - Justin McCrary (University of California, Berkeley)
Professor of Law, University of California, Berkeley. Principal research interests: crime and urban problems, law and economics, corporations, employment discrimination, and empirical legal studies. Papers on SSRN
Conference Organizers
- Bernard Black (Northwestern University, Law and Kellogg School of Management)
Nicholas J. Chabraja Professor at Northwestern University, with positions in the Law School and Kellogg School of Management. Principal research interests: law and finance, international corporate governance, health law and policy; empirical legal studies. Papers on SSRN - Mathew McCubbins (University of Southern California)
Provost Professor of Business, Law and Political Economy at University of Southern California, with positions in the Marshall School of Business, the Gould School of Law, and the Department of Political Science. Principal research interests: legislative organization; communication, learning and decisionmaking; research design; network economics. Papers on SSRN
Registration and Workshop Cost
Tuition is $550; with a discounted rate of $350 for graduate students (PhD, SJD, or law) and post-doctoral fellows. The workshop fee includes all materials, a temporary Stata12 license, breakfast, lunch, snacks, and Monday evening reception. These amounts will increase by $50 on June 15, 2013.
Registration deadline: July 26, 2013.
You can cancel on or before June 14, 2013 for a 75% refund and by July 12, 2013, 2013 for a 50% refund (in each case, less credit card processing fee), but there are no refunds after that.
For Northwestern or USC-affiliated attendees, tuition is $200 (basically our marginal cost for meals and incidental expenses) but we will charge the full rate if you register and then fail to in fact attend a majority of the sessions.
Questions about the workshop
Please email Bernie Black bblack@northwestern.edu or Mat McCubbins mmccubbins@law.usc.edu for substantive questions or fee waiver requests, and Michael Cooper causalinference@law.northwestern.edu for logistics and registration.
Workshop Schedule
Monday, August 12 (Don Rubin)
Choosing estimands (the science). Implications of choice of estimand for choice of method. Principal stratification. Flexible matching methods. Multiple imputation of missing potential outcomes.
Tuesday, August 13 (Ben Hansen)
Advanced matching. This session focuses on the use of propensity-score based, optimal matching methods to reliably secure covariate balance and, with additional assumptions, consistency and robustness of causal effect estimation. Methods are demonstrated with code and exercises in R. Propensity score matching is the best known of a number of techniques that play roles both in study design and in statistical analysis; the session includes a comparative discussion of alternative matching and weighting methods.
Wednesday, August 14 (Justin McCrary)
Conducting simulation studies. Generalized method of moments (GMM) as a tool for estimating treatment effects and standard errors, including adjusting standard errors for two-step estimation (e.g., reweighting). Inference and testing using the bootstrap. Topics in regression discontinuity design: nonparametric estimation; Local linear regression and density estimation; choosing bandwidth and assessing sensitivity to bandwidth choice.
Hotels
The rates below are preliminary and some may drop when Northwestern completes its contracts for 2013 with several of these hotels.
- Allerton Hotel, 701 North Michigan Avenue Chicago IL, (312) 440-1500. $140/night plus tax for queen bed. Email Jerome Gray and ask for Northwestern rate. Older but nice hotel, smaller rooms. (prices may change)
- Omni Chicago Hotel, 676 North Michigan Avenue, Chicago IL, (312) 944-6664. $189/night plus tax for deluxe room single/double occupancy. Email London Bess and ask for Northwestern rate. (prices may change)
- MileNorth Hotel, 166 East Superior Street, Chicago IL, (312) 787-6000. Closest to Northwestern, a bit nicer than the Allerton. Email: Jennifer Welch. $179/night plus tax for a studio-king/queen/double. (prices may change)
- Double Tree, 300 East Ohio Street, Chicago IL, (312) 224-2127. King or double bed, $169/night plus tax for a standard room. Email Katie Trent and ask for the Northwestern rate. (prices may change)
- Howard Johnson Inn, 720 North Lasalle Street, (312) 664-8100. A respectable low cost option.
You might check online services, such as www.cheaphotels.com and www.hotwire.com. Hotwire can have especially good deals, but you won't know what hotel you are at until the last minute.
A number of other hotels in the area also offer discounts to Northwestern guests, visit our hotel information page for additional options.
