Gov2001 May 2006

gov2001@lists.gking.harvard.edu

29 participants
30 discussions

[gov2001-l] Kira, Anant, and Abby's Draft Abstract

by abby.williamson＠gmail.com

Hello all, We?d appreciate your comments on our draft abstract. The title remains a bit awkward, so any suggestions on that are particularly welcome. Best, Abby, Kira, and Anant >From ?Sing, Sing, Sing? to ?The Sound of Silence:? Evidence that Generational Replacement is Shrinking Americans' Discussion Networks Kira Matus, Anant Thaker, Abigail Williamson Abstract Comparing Americans' discussion networks in 1985 and 2004, McPherson et. al. (2006) find a substantial drop in the number of people adults talk to about important matters. Over this period, the mean number of discussion partners reported on the General Social Survey fell from three to two, while the mode fell from three to zero. Since questions about discussion networks elicit information about respondents? most intimate ties, this finding suggests that Americans today have fewer sources of socio-emotional support. We extend McPherson et. al.'s findings, using exact matching to demonstrate that changes in the racial, educational, and income composition of the population do not account for network shrinkage between 1985 and 2004. Rather, we find evidence of Putnam's (2000) claim that generational replacement is key in explaining shrinking social networks, as consecutively less social cohorts replace the especially gregarious World War II generation.

17 years, 11 months

[gov2001-l] Abstract: Merve and Chris

by crhodes＠fas.harvard.edu

Hey all, Below is our abstract. Enjoy. Liberalization versus Sustained Openness? Remodeling the Impact of Democratization on the Initial Move to Free Trade Is the process of democratization associated with trade liberalization in lesser-developed countries? Milner and Kubota (2005) argue that the transition to democracy prevents political leaders from using trade barriers to secure electoral support: their empirical analysis finds a positive relationship between democratization and openness. Using nonparametric matching procedures, we demonstrate that these results conflate the impact of democratization with simple policy inertia: governments who have liberalized their trade regimes in the past are more likely to sustain liberalized trade regimes in the future, despite the democratization of their political regimes. We then employ a rare events logit model to show that there is no association between democratization and the initial onset of trade liberalization.

17 years, 11 months

[gov2001-l] sandip and dan: abstract

by d.k.fetter＠gmail.com

The Economic Costs of Conflict? A Case Study of Punjab We assess the economic costs of the secessionist conflict in Punjab by applying the synthetic control group method of Abadie and Gardeazabal (2003) to data from India, creating a "counterfactual" Punjab without terrorism as a weighted average of other Indian states. In doing so we demonstrate the usefulness of placebo analyses ? creating synthetic controls for states in the original control group ? in inferring causal effects with only one treated observation. While at first glance our results show a gap between the actual and counterfactual GDP growth paths, we find that this gap is comparable to the gap produced by running placebo analyses on states that did not experience terrorism. Hence we cannot infer that terrorism had a strong negative impact on growth in Punjab. This stands in contrast to Abadie's and Gardazabal's results from Spain, where the GDP gap for the Basque Country during its period of terrorism exceeds those generated from placebo analyses on other regions.

17 years, 11 months

[gov2001-l] Revised Abstract: Jacqueline and Jen

by jkatkin＠fas.harvard.edu

Hi everyone, Below is a revised version of our abstract. Thanks in advance for any comments! Jen and Jacqueline The Media Followed the Parties, but Not Equally on All Issues: A Closer Look at Agenda Formation in the 1997 British General Election A small body of literature has attempted to determine the flow of agenda-setting during political campaigns: do the media lead the parties or vice versa? Using time-series cross-sectional data from the 1997 British general election, Brandenburg (2002) employs ordinary least squares regression to conclude that agenda formation was unidirectional, from parties to media. We replicate these results but find evidence in first differences that parties conceivably followed the media as well. We therefore re-estimate Brandenburg's models using negative binomial regression, given the over-dispersed count-data. Changes in media coverage that chronologically follow changes in party coverage *are* greater than party changes that follow media changes. Additionally, because the negative binomial model permits variation in party influence across policy dimensions, we demonstrate that the parties particularly affected the media's tendency to cover the economy, welfare, education and foreign policy. OLS treats jumps between policy dimensions identically and thus improperly suggests a uniform impact across all issues. (154 words)

17 years, 11 months

[gov2001-l] Abstract for Yuki and Doru

by king＠harvard.edu

dan makes good piints. In addition, do u have a measure for unstabe electorates and wedge issues? Both sound like they would be novel amd also hard to do. If not I would reword. Gary -----Original Message----- From: Dan Hopkins <dhopkins(a)fas.harvard.edu> Date: Sunday, Apr 30, 2006 7:54 pm Subject: Re: [gov2001-l] Abstract for Yuki and Doru Certainly sounds like an interesting paper! In terms of recommendations for the abstract, here are mine: First, can you capture your actual argument in the title itself? Not to sound like a broken record, but... Second, I'm not sure that "electorates" is exactly the right word in the second sentence--perhaps just "demographic groups"? Third, I might find a way to consolidate the conventional wisdom that you are building from more succinctly if you can--perhaps in as little as a sentence or at most two, not three. Fourth, I might make how economic opportunity and racial polarization relate more clear--are they alternate hypotheses explaining the same general trend, or is this more of a novel finding? Since this appears to be your key point, I would explain it more fully, and perhaps use the title to indicate the centrality of economic opportunity in your explanation. Best, Dan On Sun, 30 Apr 2006, Doru Gavril wrote: > Here's our abstract y'all. Any complaints, suggestions, advice? (esp. does "socialize" make sense in this context?) > Yuki and Doru > _Winning Strategies_ _How Race and Economic Opportunity Shaped the California Electorate_ > Wedge issues aim to polarize the electorate and secure a majority for the proposing party. However, already committed electorates are less susceptible to this strategy than emerging constituencies. Several racially charged propositions on California ballots, aimed at polarizing the preferences of Whites and Latinos, led the latter to join the Democrats? camp while affecting little change on the former group. Unlike previous research suggested, we find no backlash from Whites against the racial wedge issues employed by Republicans. Employing a multidimensional model of partisan identification, we find that, holding constant economic opportunities in the ?80s and ?90s, White party allegiances remained mostly unchanged, while Latinos became firmly lodged in the Democratic camp. We attribute previously reported variations in the partisan makeup of the electorate to changes in economic opportunity. Thus, wedge issues appeal only to unstable, emerging electorates, and fail to muster enough momentum to persuade already socialized voters. > _______________________________________________ gov2001-l mailing list gov2001-l(a)lists.fas.harvard.edu http://lists.fas.harvard.edu/mailman/listinfo/gov2001-l _______________________________________________ gov2001-l mailing list gov2001-l(a)lists.fas.harvard.edu http://lists.fas.harvard.edu/mailman/listinfo/gov2001-l

17 years, 11 months

[gov2001-l] systemfit() question

by hlk23＠cornell.edu

Dear all, I'm trying to fit 2SLS with systemfit(). Unfortunately, it somehow doesn't allow me to add any pre-treatment covars to the first and second stages. Without any covars (i.e. without p055.k) it works just fine and also produces the correct result. Does anybody know what's wrong here? (My vars are not perfectly collinear; I've checked that of course.) Thanks, Holger first <- papilla.intake.N99 ~ contba.m + p055.k second <- weight.99 ~ papilla.intake.N99 + p055.k inst <- ~ contba.m system <- list(demand=first, supply=second) > out.1 <- systemfit("2SLS", system, inst=inst, data=data.imp1, + maxiter=1000) Error in solve.default(crossprod(Xf), crossprod(Xf, Y), tol = solvetol) : system is computationally singular: reciprocal condition number = 5.27922e-018 -- Holger Lutz Kern Graduate Student Department of Government Cornell University Institute for Quantitative Social Science Harvard University 1737 Cambridge Street N350 Cambridge, MA 02138 www.people.cornell.edu/pages/hlk23

17 years, 11 months

[gov2001-l] MCMC in SAS

by mjab＠data-miners.com

In case anyone else works in a SAS environment, I see that the SAS procedure called MI does Markov Chain Monte Carlo imputation of missing variables. -Michael =============== Michael J. A. Berry Data Miners, Inc. +1 617 742 4252

17 years, 12 months

[gov2001-l] Linear Algebra Question

by ghumphr＠fas.harvard.edu

Hello, I have a question for anyone who has a better familiarity with linear algebra than I. Does the attached document make sense? In what situations would the equation described work? In what situations would it fall apart? Thanks. Geoff

17 years, 12 months

[gov2001-l] new zelig version on servers

by yohai＠fas.harvard.edu

Hi everyone, The new Zelig version (2.6-1) is now up on the icegov servers, which corrects problems in the ordered logit and ordered probit simulation procedures. Best, Ian

17 years, 12 months

[gov2001-l] ANNOUNCE Evaluations and Announcements

by dhopkins＠fas.harvard.edu

Hi All, A few quick notes... First, course evaluations are available online as of today. When you have a moment, please go to my.harvard.edu, login, and then select "Courses," and you should then see a link to "Evaluations." We really value your feedback, so please take a moment to evaluate the course. Second, a friendly (if that's possible) reminder that the papers are due one week from today, Monday, May 8th, at 5 PM, to my mailbox just outside N-354. You only need to turn in one copy per group, and of course, you do *not* need to turn in code. Distance students should email a copy in PDF format to Ian. Third, this week's Thursday section is an informal pizza party in N-262 from 5:30 PM to 6:30 PM. We'll look forward to seeing you there! Fourth, we will hold regular office hours this week--Ian's tomorrow (Tuesday) at 4:30 PM to 6:30 PM, and mine are 4 PM to 6 PM on Wednesday. Best, Dan ---- Ph.D. Student Department of Government Harvard University Tutor, Currier House dhopkins(a)fas.harvard.edu http://www.danhopkins.org

17 years, 12 months

2024

2023

2022

2021

2020

2019

2018

2017

2016

2015

2014

2013

2012

2011

2010

2009

2008

2007

2006

2005

2004

2003

Gov2001 May 2006