If you ask political scientists whether a major goal of their empirical research is to test causal relationships, I suspect that most of them answer “yes.” In contrast, many statisticians would say that their methods may improve predictions but have little to do with causal inference. As a result, even as an increasing number of social scientists use statistical methods to infer causal effects ...

It is a piece of idle senthentality that truth, merely as truth, has any inherent power denied to error, or prevailing against the dungeon and the stake. Men are not more zealous for truth than they often are for error, and a sufficient application oflegal or even of social penalties will generally succeed in stopping the propagation of either. The real advantage which truth has, consists in th...

This paper develops a theory of the interaction between appropriative conflict and economic growth. Appropriative conflict, as measured by the diversion of resources, is viewed as the cost of securing effective property rights. We identify conditions under which conflict rises or falls as the rate of economic growth improves. The main implication of the analysis is that if the quality of proper...

Does political ideology influence economic research? We rely upon purely inductive methods in natural language processing and machine learning to examine patterns of implicit political ideology in economic articles. Using observed political behavior of economists and the phrases from their academic articles, we construct a high-dimensional predictor of political ideology by article, economist, ...

Background: Iraqi political prisoners were subjected to regular physical and psychological torture. Both physical and psychological torture methods were associated with increased PTSD symptoms, especially when combined. In Iraq, several articles were published on PTSD, but no study was focused on former political prisoners or torture victims. Therefore, this study was carried out to estimate ra...