Too Many Probabilities: Statistical Evidence of Tort Causation

Medical scientific testimony is often expressed in terms of two different probabilities: 1. The increased probability of harm if a person is exposed, for example, to a toxin. 2. The observed relationship is an artifact of the experimental method. This article demonstrates that neither probability, taken alone or together, measures whether the preponderance of the evidence test is met

Too Many Probabilities: Statistical Evidence of Tort Causation

Medical scientific testimony is often expressed in terms of two different probabilities: 1. The increased probability of harm if a person is exposed, for example, to a toxin. 2. The observed relationship is an artifact of the experimental method. This article demonstrates that neither probability, taken alone or together, measures whether the preponderance of the evidence test is met

Lying about firm performance: Evidence from a survey in Nigeria

It is difficult to be sure that managers in developing countries report financial information accurately and truthfully during firm surveys. The most common concern is that managers might under-report performance to avoid attracting attention from the tax authorities or corrupt bureaucrats. Using a method developed in the literature on corruption, this paper identifies managers who appear to be reticent or deceptive and compares their answers with the answers of non-reticent managers. The paper shows that reticent managers report that their firms are more, not less, productive than non-reticent managers. The paper then assesses possible reasons for this, finding that the most likely explanation is that reticent managers exaggerate performance so that they or their firms look good. Because past studies have found that reticent managers appear to lie about other aspects of firm and manager behavior—including underreporting corruption—this suggests that it will be difficult to fully assess how these behaviors affect firm performance unless reticence is controlled for.Reticence; Nigeria; Firm Surveys; Corruption; Labor Productivity

On Causal Relations between Mental Organizer, Action under Mental Processes, and Social Environment

The purpose of the research was to study the relationships between mental organizers, action under mental process, and social environment through observation. A category system for each behavior was constructed and data were analyzed with matrices to find out kinds of root causes in causal dynamic. Reliability, subjectivity, and validity of observation were assessed. The coefficient of reliability was 0.937. The observation had about 11% subjectivity, and the frequencies were in the categories where they should be, mainly. Results indicate that there occurs causal variety. The causes are not stable. As an entity, the results show that it is possible to tackle mind processes through the causation. Furthermore, the processes are in series but they drop by in a parallel mode when the task becomes more difficult. However, the mindamic seems to have the greatest possible number of the degrees of freedom, simultaneously

Causal Relations via Econometrics

Applied econometric work takes a superficial approach to causality. Understanding economic affairs, making good policy decisions, and progress in the economic discipline depend on our ability to infer causal relations from data. We review the dominant approaches to causality in econometrics, and suggest why they fail to give good results. We feel the problem cannot be solved by traditional tools, and requires some out-of-the-box thinking. Potentially promising approaches to solutions are discussed.causality, regression, Granger Causality, Exogeneity, Cowles Commission, Hendry Methodology, Natural Experiments