Record Details


Field	Value

Title	Replication Data for: Looking for twins: how to build better counterfactuals with matching

Identifier	https://doi.org/10.7910/DVN/CYZFCC

Creator	Costalli, Stefano Negri, Fedra

Publisher	Harvard Dataverse

Description	A primary challenge for researchers that make use of observational data is selection bias (i.e., the units of analysis exhibit systematic differences and dis-homogeneities due to non-random selection into treatment). This article encourages researchers in acknowledging this problem and discusses how and - more importantly - under which assumptions they may resort to statistical matching techniques to reduce the imbalance in the empirical distribution of pre-treatment observable variables between the treatment and control groups. With the aim of providing a practical guidance, the article engages with the evaluation of the effectiveness of peacekeeping missions in the case of the Bosnian civil war, a research topic in which selection bias is a structural feature of the observational data researchers have to use, and shows how to apply the Coarsened Exact Matching (CEM), the most widely used matching algorithm in the fields of Political Science and International Relations.

Subject	Social Sciences selection bias causation statistical matching coarsened exact matching peacekeeping

Contributor	Negri, Fedra

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