EITM An Assessment with an Application to Economic VotingEITM的评估与应用经济投票.pptVIP

V. The Benefits of Ensuring a Dialogue Between Theory and Test EITM can fit with existing research strategies in three ways: Evolution of scientific accumulation. Comparing contradictory ideas. Test versus consistency evaluation. How EITM Informs Debates Social scientists face two common challenges face in their research undertaking: developing useful theories that are realistic representations of human behavior on the one hand and making use of feedback from empirical observations in refining the theory on the other. In the scenario where the two processes are not linked – such as in the case where theoretical and empirical work is carried out separately in a silo – researchers are unable to obtain the benefits from the interaction of the two activities. The dilemmas that theory is ahead of data or data are ahead of theory can be dealt with more effectively employing the EITM approach. VI. Limitations of EITM There are two main limitations: Observational equivalence: Observational equivalence is related to identification. Recall reduced form estimates fail to provide structural parameters and this requires use of model or parameter restrictions so identification is achieved. Observational equivalence occurs when two or more rival models provide statistically indistinguishable reduced form results. Moreover, observational equivalence can occur even if the respective models are identified. An important paper on this issue is by Thomas Sargent (1976). In his review of this issue Patrick Minford (1992) summarizes Sargent’s (1976) results as follows: The good news is this challenge in distinguishing between rival models can be narrow occurring in one dependent variable, but not in other dependent variables but the bad news is its existence is still a problem. Potential solutions do exist but none are generalizable. They are for a specific case. These solutions include either imposing theoretically justified exclusion restrictions or iden