Causal Argument Research Articles

Varieties of Regulation and Financialization: Comparative Pathways to Top Income Inequality in the OECD, 1975–2005

With financialization now acknowledged as one of the most potent threats to income equality, can finance-driven inequality be explained by a singular causal argument? Taking the case of top incomes across the OECD, this paper addresses the standard causal narrative of finance-driven inequality, where rising top income inequality is explained as a function of deregulation, financial sector growth, and a parallel weakening of the role of trade unions and the government. Applying fuzzy-set Qualitative Comparative Analysis (fsQCA) to a time-series dataset (1975–2005), it assesses the ways in which configurations of institutions combined in different ways prior to the recent financial crisis, to create policy contexts conducive to top income growth. It does this by adopting a time-series approach to QCA, involving calibration and analysis of data at three successive historical waves. Results suggest that top incomes in the era of finance-driven capitalism were subject to a diversity of causal paths which generated similar outcomes in different contexts, in a manner which departs substantially from the standard narrative. In doing so, it elaborates on the application of time-series approaches to case-based analysis, and uses its results to discuss the ways in which institutions may combine in different ways to generate similar, or divergent outcomes.

The Single-Group, Pre- and Posttest Design in Nursing Education Research: It's Time to Move on.

Studying the effectiveness of educational interventions is centrally important to building the science of nursing education. Yet, the design most commonly used in the study of nursing education interventions-the single-group, preand posttest design-provides limited evidence to support claims of intervention effectiveness. In this Methodology Corner installment, the limitations of the single-group, preand posttest design are outlined and a review of the requirements for establishing stronger arguments for causality is presented. To overcome the limitations of single-group, preand posttest designs, nursing education researchers are encouraged to employ study designs and procedures that can significantly strengthen researchers' claims of intervention effectiveness. [J Nurs Educ. 2018;57(2):69-71.].

GW170817, general relativistic magnetohydrodynamic simulations, and the neutron star maximum mass.

Recent numerical simulations in general relativistic magnetohydrodynamics (GRMHD) provide useful constraints for the interpretation of the GW170817 discovery. Combining the observed data with these simulations leads to a bound on the maximum mass of a cold, spherical neutron star (the TOV limit): , where β is the ratio of the maximum mass of a uniformly rotating neutron star (the supramassive limit) over the maximum mass of a nonrotating star. Causality arguments allow β to be as high as 1.27, while most realistic candidate equations of state predict β to be closer to 1.2, yielding in the range 2.16-2.28M⊙. A minimal set of assumptions based on these simulations distinguishes this analysis from previous ones, but leads a to similar estimate. There are caveats, however, and they are enumerated and discussed. The caveats can be removed by further simulations and analysis to firm up the basic argument.

Married Women’s Economic Independence and Divorce in the Nineteenth- and Early-Twentieth-Century United States

We analyze the effects of the Married Women’s Property Acts and Earnings Acts (EAs) on divorce rates in the late-nineteenth- and early-twentieth-century United States. We find that the property acts increased divorce rates, which is consistent with the predicted outcome, in household extensive bargaining models, of an increase in the married woman’s relative bargaining power. We also find some evidence that the EAs had a positive effect on divorce rates, though it is not statistically significant after accounting for the possibility that divorce rates changed prior to the enactment of an EA. To support our causal argument, we control for regional trends in the divorce rate and account for the timing of the laws’ effects. We also assess alternative explanations for the rise in divorce rates during the late nineteenth century, including age structure, divorce law, urbanization, economic development, and foreign immigration, and we find that only age structure and urbanization positively affected divorce rates along with the property acts. Finally, we provide support for our argument from court cases in which the acts were used to defend a woman’s property rights against claims from her ex-husband.

Comment on “Why Has Japan Failed to Escape from Deflation?”

Understanding the price dynamics is always at the heart of studies on monetary policy. If prices are flexible, there is no need for monetary policy as a stabilization tool. If not, central banks should offer some nominal anchor so that welfare costs stemming from relative price dispersion should be reduced. Watanabe and Watanabe (2018) conduct careful analyses using micro data. Two main conclusions are: a simple menu cost model can explain the price developments in Japan well in that “there is a negative correlation between trend inflation and the share of items whose rate of price change is near zero,”1 and the “inflation norm” is too low in Japan. Watanabe and Watanabe provide comprehensive empirical facts to support these two conclusions. It also merits attention that the observed empirical regularities are replicated with simulations using a simple menu cost model. Structural interpretations of the empirical findings are offered albeit indirectly via model simulation. Not only do Watanabe and Watanabe offer convincing facts in understanding the Japanese economy from the view point of positive analysis, but also the findings in their paper have an immediate policy implication: It is not easy for Japan to attain an inflation target of 2%. Papers with important facts and significant policy implications are always good and highly appreciated. Watanabe and Watanabe's paper is one of these good papers. Thus, I do not have any particular comments to oppose their main conclusions. Let me comment on what we do not know from the data, and the policy implication. We do not know the markups in individual goods. In their menu cost model, nominal rigidities are favored as the way to explain price developments in Japan. This conclusion is mainly supported by the analyses in Sections 2.2 and 2.3 about the flattening of the reduced-form Phillips curve. However, we still cannot conclude that this less clearer relationship between inflation and unemployment rates is as a result of higher nominal rigidities possibly due to menu costs, since we cannot observe marginal costs. The relationship between inflation and unemployment rates can be just a reduced-form one. In the language of the New Keynesian model, unemployment or the output gap must be structurally related to markups. Otherwise, a causal argument is not possible. I am not fully sure whether such a relationship is stemming from menu costs or higher real rigidities around zero inflation rates. Real rigidities arise when marginal costs are sticky or marginal revenues are flexible. The former can be caused by habit formation in consumption, endogenous capacity utilization or investment growth adjustment costs as included in the canonical dynamic stochastic general equilibrium (DSGE) model a la Christiano et al. (2005), while the latter can emerge with a kinked demand curve as examined in the first-generation New Keynesian Model a la Kimball (1995). In order to identify the causes of the less clearer relationship between inflation and unemployment rates, it would be ideal if we can use the marginal cost data as examined in Eichenbaum et al. (2011). The inability to observe markups means that a careful interpretation of the analyses in Watanabe and Watanabe's section 4 is required. If the relationship between unemployment and markup is not stable nor structural, increasing real rigidities around zero inflation rates can explain the fact that “price stickiness as measured by the share of unchanged items increases as the inflation rate declines from a positive value to zero.” More stickiness around lower inflation rates should imply higher welfare costs stemming from relative price dispersions. On the other hand, menu costs are small near zero inflation rates. Besides the problems due to the zero lower bound on nominal interest rates, should the central bank really care about inflation developments near zero inflation rates? This point is related to the conclusion made by Nakamura et al. (2016) that “the main costs of inflation in the New Keynesian model are completely elusive in the data. This implies that the strong conclusions about optimality of low inflation rates reached by researchers using models of this kind need to be reassessed.”

A pragma-dialectical approach to governmental crisis communication

Abstract To explore an argumentative approach to governmental crisis communication, this research adopts the pragma-dialectical framework to analyze and evaluate a local Chinese government’s crisis discourse concerning disputes over a proposed chemical project. The discourse is collected from the popular local online forum Mengxi Forum. By reconstructing from the discourse the four stages of a critical discussion, analyzing the embedded strategic maneuverings and evaluating the argumentation in view of institutional preconditions, it is shown that in its use of co-ordinative argumentation structures and causal argument schemes, the local government’s crisis discourse is not dialectically reasonable enough to convince the other stakeholders of the necessity to implement the proposed project. The results also shed some light on the necessity for governments’ crisis information management to ensure in its crisis discourse both dialectical reasonableness and rhetorical effectiveness.

The Moral Complexities of Eating Meat

Abstract The Moral Complexities of Eating Meat is a welcome addition to the growing literature on the moral issues revolving around our eating habits. While much of the volume concerns the so-called causal impotence argument— the idea that since, as individuals, we do little to add to the harm imposed on animals, some opportunistic carnivorism on our parts is not blameworthy—there are thought-provoking essays running the gamut from defending the practice of meat eating more generally to insisting that strict vegetarianism is the only morally permissible way to engage with our food. The essays are, without exception, cogent and accessible and can be usefully incorporated into most classes that deal with animal or applied ethics.

Making rigorous causal claims in a real-life context: Has research contributed to sustainable forest management?

This article reflects on an evaluation commissioned by the Centre for International Forestry Research, an international research centre working on tropical forests. In the Congo basin, it took from 10 to 20 years for research works to influence the sustainability of forest management through a complex web of interactions between timber companies, national governments, international organizations, development agencies, NGOs, and consultancies. By applying the contribution analysis approach, the evaluation was able to trace several causal pathways which percolated through this web of interactions and resulted in a number of contributions always indirect and marginal but sometimes necessary. The article discusses how contribution claims were inferred from evidence, what the underlying logic of causal arguments was, how some contributions could be qualified as necessary ones, and how far the evaluation went on the way to generalization. The discussion bridges contribution analysis with process tracing and realist evaluation.

A causal argument for dualism

Dualism holds (roughly) that some mental events are fundamental and non-physical. I develop a prima facie plausible causal argument for dualism. The argument has several significant implications. First, it constitutes a new way of arguing for dualism. Second, it provides dualists with a parity response to causal arguments for physicalism. Third, it transforms the dialectical role of epiphenomenalism. Fourth, it refutes the view that causal considerations prima facie support physicalism but not dualism. After developing the causal argument for dualism and drawing out these implications, I subject the argument to a battery of objections. Some prompt revisions to the argument. Others reveal limitations in scope. It falls out of the discussion that the causal argument for dualism is best used against physicalism as a keystone in a divide and conquer strategy.

Evidently epistential adverbs are argumentative indicators: A corpus-based study

Argumentative indicators of discourse relations constitute crucial cues for the mining of arguments. However, a comprehensive lexicon of these linguistic devices is so far lacking due to the scarcity of corpora argumentatively annotated and the absence of an empirically validated analytic methodology. Recent studies have shown that modals, that express that things might be otherwise, and evidentials, that point to the presence of information sources, are good candidates to work as argumentative indicators. On these grounds, we propose a systematic, non-language specific corpus-based procedure to identify indicators of argumentative discourse relations. We test the design of a multi-level annotation through the analysis of the English and Italian epistential adverbs evidently and evidentemente in comparable corpora of newspaper articles. We show that the annotation guidelines achieve consistent analytical results with expert annotators. Data analysis reveals that the two adverbs work as argumentative indicator both at the structural and at the inferential level: besides pointing to the presence of premises-conclusion relations, they recurrently pattern with causal argument schemes from the effect to the cause. The Italian adverb evidentemente is less polysemous and more frequent, thus working as a more reliable indicator.

Causal Inefficacy and Utilitarian Arguments Against the Consumption of Factory-Farmed Products

Utilitarian objections to the consumption of factory-farmed products center primarily on the harms such farms cause to animals. One problem with the utilitarian case against the consumption of factory-farmed products is that the system of production is so vast and complex that no typical, individual consumer can, through her consumer behavior, make any difference to the welfare of animals. I grant for the sake of argument that this causal inefficacy objection is sound and go on to argue that the utilitarian nevertheless has the resources to conclude that at least in some cases it is wrongful on utilitarian grounds for an individual to consume factory-farmed products. When a consumer who believes that factory farming is wrongful consumes the products of factory farms, she endorses wrongful practices, and by doing so she engages in a form of self-harm. Self harm, like harm to others, must be taken into consideration when a utilitarian agent deliberates about the permissibility of her proposed course of action. Therefore, the causal inefficacy objection, while powerful, is not decisive against utilitarian objections to consuming factory-farmed products.

Abstract Objects, Causal Efficacy, and Causal Exclusion

Abstract objects are standardly taken to be causally inert, but this claim is rarely explicitly argued for. In the context of his platonism about musical works, in order for musical works to be audible, Julian Dodd argues that abstracta are causally efficacious in virtue of their concrete tokens participating in events. I attempt to provide a principled argument for the causal inertness of abstracta by first rejecting Dodd’s arguments from events, and then extending and generalizing the causal exclusion argument to the abstract/concrete distinction. For reasons of parsimony, if concrete tokens or instantiations of abstract objects account for all causal work, then there is no reason to attribute causal efficacy to abstracta, and thus reason to maintain their causal inertness. I then consider how one of the main arguments against causal exclusion, namely Stephen Yablo’s notion of “proportionality”, could be modified to support the causal efficacy of abstracta. I argue that from a few simple premises Yablo’s account in fact supports their causal inertness. Having a principled reason for the causal inertness of abstracta appears to entail that the musical platonist must admit that we never literally hear the musical work, but only its performances. I sketch a solution to this problem available to Dodd, so that the musical platonist can maintain that musical works are abstract objects and are causally inert while retaining their audibility.

Prison Crowding and Violent Misconduct

In recent years justice reform has been a popular bipartisan topic in U.S. politics, with reducing the burgeoning U.S. prison population as one of the primary goals. The first objective of this research is to estimate the causal relationship between prison crowdedness and prison violence that is essential to understanding the impacts of having severely overcrowded prisons as well as efforts to reduce such crowding. I exploit exogenous variation in California prison populations, resulting from a Supreme Court mandate to reduce prison crowding, to estimate this relationship. Using both difference-in-difference and instrumental variable identification strategies, I identify a significant positive effect robust to a variety of model specifications. The estimates suggest that reducing prison crowding by 10 percentage points leads to a reduction in the rates of assaults and batteries by 15% or more. These estimates of the relationship between prison crowding and violent misconduct are, to my knowledge, the first in the literature with a justifiable argument for causality. The second objective of this research is to explain the paucity of empirical evidence to support the widely held belief among correctional policy makers and practitioners that there is a positive causal relationship between prison crowding and violence. A simple reduced form model is presented which recognizes that population shocks inevitably change both crowdedness and the composition of the prison population, assuming some heterogeneity in inmates’ baseline propensities toward violence. Failure to account for this can bias estimates towards zero. Although the estimation strategy used in this paper does not directly control for compositional changes, I provide persuasive evidence towards the presence of a compositional effect. The estimates provided are therefore a lower bound on the true effect of crowding on violence.

Should Reductive Physicalists Reject the Causal Argument?

Reductive physicalists typically accept the causal argument for their view. On this score, Tiehen (2015) parts ways with his fellow reductive physicalists. Heretically, he argues that reductive physicalists should reject the causal argument. After presenting Tiehen's challenge, I defend the orthodoxy. Although not myself a reductive physicalist, I show how reductive physicalists can resist this challenge to the causal argument. I conclude with a positive suggestion about how reductive physicalists should use the causal argument.

Invited Commentary: Cassel's "The Contribution of the Social Environment to Host Resistance"-A Modern Classic.

John Cassel's 1976 paper "The Contribution of the Social Environment to Host Resistance" (Am J Epidemiol. 1976;104(2):107-123) is widely regarded as a classic in epidemiology. He makes the compelling argument that the quality of a person's social relationships, that is, the degree to which her relationships are more stressful than supportive (or vice versa) influences her susceptibility to disease independent of genetic endowment, diet, physical activity, etc. Cassel's provocative thesis was anchored in a cogent synthesis of findings from animal experiments and observational studies on diverse human populations. Beginning in the late 1970s, the paper stimulated an explosion of epidemiologic research on social support and human health. Beyond advancing epidemiologic theory, Cassel showed how findings from various epidemiologic study designs could be marshalled to build a persuasive causal argument that impaired social bonds increase the risk of premature disease and death. The paper also foreshadowed core ideas of later theoretical constructs, such as weathering and allostatic load, regarding the power of chronic environmental stressors to accelerate biological aging across multiple organ systems. Cassel's assessment of the research and practice implications of his conclusions has remarkable contemporary resonance for the field of epidemiology.

Causality arguments behind closed-form description of air dispersion in the mid-infrared

We show that a closed-form Sellmeier-equation description of the refractive index of atmospheric air can be extended to the mid- and long-wavelength infrared spectral ranges, where the optical response of air is dominated by molecular rovibrational modes. When written in the form of a Sellmeier-type equation, the formula of air refractivity is shown to be instrumental for the analysis of group-velocity dispersion of atmospheric air, helping identify the regions of broadband anomalous dispersion, where long-distance transmission and soliton pulse compression of high-power mid- and long-wavelength infrared field waveforms are possible.

Kant’s Causal Power Argument Against Empirical Affection

AbstractA well-known trilemma faces the interpretation of Kant’s theory of affection, namely whether the objects that affect us are empirical, noumenal or both. I argue that, according to Kant, the things that affect us and cause representations in us are not empirical objects. I articulate what I call the Causal Power Argument, according to which empirical objects cannot affect us because they do not have the right kind of power to cause representations. All the causal powers that empirical objects have are moving powers, and such powers can only have spatial effects. According to Kant, however, the representations that arise in us as a result of the affection of our sensibility are non-spatial. I show that this argument is put forward by Kant in a number of passages, and figures as a decisive reason for rejecting empirical affection and instead endorsing affection by the things in themselves.

Manipulationism and causal exclusion

A new way of avoiding the causal exclusion argument in the context of manipulationism is proposed. In manipulationism, causal explanations are defined by counterfactual information accessed through manipulations. It is argued that the property of manipulability can be an emergent property of aggregate systems. Therefore, some causal explanations are non-reducible and causal exclusion is avoided. This emergentist notion of causal explanation addresses the question of how the special sciences can be based upon causal reasoning, even if fundamental physics is absent of causal relations.

Book Review: North Korea’s Hidden Revolution: How the Information Underground is Transforming a Closed Society

Book Review North Korea’s Hidden Revolution: How the Information Underground is Transforming a Closed Society, by Jieun Baek. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 2016. 282 pages. $30.00 hardcover. Jieun Baek’s North Korea’s Hidden Revolution examines how media flows secretly into and out of North Korea, as well as how this information affects North Korean society. Baek illuminates how networks of citizens take enormous risks as they disseminate and consume illegal content including foreign films, TV shows, books, and news. The author discusses the ways in which forbidden information is spread through gossip, freedom balloons, radio, and USBs. Baek utilizes in-depth interviews with ten North Korean defectors, and cites a variety of academic sources, news websites, governmental documents, and non-governmental organizations (NGOs). The author argues that foreign media “may be instrumental in someday bringing down one of the most brutal and repressive regimes in modern history” (p. x). Baek explains the interlinked networks of actors who push illegal media into North Korea, including compassion-driven networks (e.g., good-will driven organizations who raise funds to create content and fill USBs), profit-driven networks (e.g., smugglers who work for profit to move USBs), and demanddriven networks (e.g., those who consume the content). The author makes a causal argument that “Thisactive flowof goods and information now plays a Korean Studies © 2018 by University of Hawai‘i Press. All rights reserved. central role in the social consciousness of North Korean individuals, and has sparked irreversible changes inside North Korea” (p. xviii). This text offers a coherent picture of the inflow of illicit media. Baek illustrates how the Great Famine drove people away from their work assignments and toward illegal markets and trade. CDs and VHS cassettes with Korean, Chinese, and American films became available on the black market. To counter such cracks in the system, police began to conduct home inspections looking for illegal media, and there ensued bribery or punishment. The author pieces together her interviewees’ stories intelligibly, illustrating that citizens are “more curious than afraid” (p. 55). Regarding “old school” media, Baek argues “word of mouth was and still is the most trusted and widely used source of information for North Koreans” (p. 89). The author provides examples, such as citizens receiving information about currency exchange rates and commodity prices from Chinese traders across the border. Baek also addresses the use of “freedom balloons” to deliver pro-democracy literature, radios, and USBs loaded with foreign media. However, balloon launches have the potential to cause threats to national security. Baek does not mention the use of GPS-guided balloons or other modern vehicular technologies to deliver information, such as drones. NGOs such as the North Korean Strategy Center utilize more covert delivery of information on USBs via the Chinese-North Korean border. Baek provides a thorough discussion of the usage and importance of radio. The author lays out interviewees’ testimony about their previous use of radio when living in North Korea, as well as defectors’ production of programs aimed at North Korean consumption. The content of these radio programs include news, music, South Korean dramas, descriptions of South Korean society, North Korean defector memoirs, biographies of the Kim family, and content pertaining to history, human rights, and democracy. The Unification Media Group has “a joint goal of reaching one million North Korean adults within the next five years in order to spark organic changes from within the country” (p. 134). In her discussion of the digital underground, Baek more fully explores the dissemination of information via cellular networks and content-filled USB drives. Up to 2000 calls using cell phones are made between South Korea and North Korea each day; many of which allow family members to remain in touch and coordinate the transfer of money and goods to North Korean relatives via brokers in China and North Korea. Despite tracking, surveillance, and the risk of punishment, illegal cell usage continues to grow. Although Baek’s primary argument is that the information Korean Studies 2018 underground is transforming North Korea, the author acknowledges that “information campaigns into North Korea are not linear experiments with the human mind, whereby a...

Pre-Analysis Plans for Qualitative Research

El diseno y el registro de Planes Pre-Analisis (PAP) representa un avance significativo en la transparencia de la investigacion en ciencias sociales. Esta herramienta es comunmente usada en la investigacion experimental. En esta nota de investigacion proponemos expandir el uso de los PAP a la investigacion cualitativa. En las decadas recientes, se han producido una serie de innovaciones metodologicas que han mejorado la calidad de los analisis cualitativos. Estas nuevas herramientas han permitido que los investigadores hayan avanzado en el mejoramiento de los procesos de recoleccion de datos y la transparencia en el analisis de datos cualitativo. El desarrollo de Planes Pre-Analisis Cualitativos (PAP-Q) busca sintetizar estos avances como guia de investigacion para mejorar la transparencia y la especificacion del rol de la induccion en la construccion de argumentos causales.