Thoughtful coverage of ongoing discussions in the field — RCTs versus observational methods, external validity, ethics, bias, and the limits of causal claims.
Debates & Controversies
Posterior or Sampling Distribution? The Bayesian-Frequentist Debate in Causal Inference
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Do Causal Estimates Travel? External Validity and the Credibility Revolution in Development
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Dynamic Difference-in-Differences: Are Event Study Coefficients Reliable Estimates of Causal Dynamics?
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Are Regression Discontinuity Designs Actually Identifying What We Think? Manipulation, Heaping, and the Limits of Continuity
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Harvesting Causal Estimates: Can We Meta-Analyse DiD and Event-Study Results?
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Machine Learning or Theory for Covariate Selection? A Methodological Debate
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Machine Learning or Economic Theory? The Debate Over Covariate Selection in Applied Economics
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Reduced Form vs Structural Models: Do We Need Theory for External Validity?
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Treatment Effect Heterogeneity: Feature or Bug in Policy Evaluation?
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Pooling vs. Stratification: Should Policy Evaluations Report Subgroup Effects?
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Is Every "Natural Experiment" Really Natural? Scrutinising the Exclusion Restriction
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Selection on Parallel Trends: The Hidden Assumption Behind Conditional DiD
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Machine Learning versus Structural Models: Two Visions of Policy Counterfactuals
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Publication Bias and the File Drawer Problem: Are Published Effect Sizes Too Big?
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Synthetic Control vs. Difference-in-Differences: When to Use Which?
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RCTs vs. Observational Studies: Is Randomisation the Gold Standard?
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Pre-registration and Researcher Degrees of Freedom: Does Economics Have a Replication Problem?
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External Validity: Are Local Average Treatment Effects Policy-Relevant?
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