syllabus

CAUSAL INFERENCE READING GROUP

Spring 2005, Wednesdays 3PM

Parran Hall, Room 325A

Notes

The first meeting of the causal inference reading group (CIRG) willbe Wednesday, February 23rd at 3PM. We will discuss the format anddirection which we want to take in the future. I'm currently planning on meeting about twice a month for the first three months or so; we can discuss scheduling as well.

In the first meeting, I will review some basic ideas for causal inference, with a focus on Donald Rubin's counterfactual model. I willlean heavily on the papers by Paul Holland (1986) and Richard Stone(1993).

The second meeting will be Wednesday, March 9th from 3-5PM. I willpresent the paper by Richard Stone(1993).

The third and fourth meetings will be Wednesday, March 30th from 4-6PM and WednesdayApril 6th from 4-6PM. We may change rooms; I'll send an email out if we do. In these meetingsGong Tang will discuss the paper by Angrist, Imbens and Rubin (1996) on instrumental varaibles,and also some of the early work by Jamie Robins. There are links to both of these below.

The 5th meeting will be Wednesday April 20th from 4-6PM. I have invited Richard Scheines from CMUto talk on graphical models for causal inference.

The sixth meeting will be Wednesday, May 4th from 4-6PM. Ricardo Silva is going topick up where Richard left off; he'll be talking about causal graphs with latent variables.

List of Articles

Article by Holland (1986)

Article by Stone (1993)

Link to John Snow article

Article by Freedman (1999)

Article by Cole and Hernan (2002)

Article by Greenland and Brumback (2002)

Article by Angrist, Imbens, and Rubin (1996)

Link to Robins (1986) article

Link to article by Scheines

Powerpoint slides of Richard Scheines talk

Link to article by Silva