Advanced Search
MyIDEAS: Login

Causal Structure and Hierarchies of Model

Contents:

Author Info

  • Kevin D. Hoover

Abstract

Economics places a high premium on completeness of explanation. Typical general-equilibrium accounts of economic phenomena are preferred to partial equilibrium accounts on the ground that important interactions are necessarily omitted in the latter. A similar preference for microfoundational explanations over macroeconomic explanations of aggregate phenomena is grounded in similar reasoning. Probabilistic accounts of causation frequently presume that greater detail is superior to less. Simpson’s paradox, for example, assumes that failure to account for distinctions within populations results in false conclusions. Strategies of causal refinement – e.g., distinguishing between direct and indirect causes – are similar. However, there are countervailing practices in economics. Representative-agent models aim to capture economic motivation but not to reduce the level of aggregation. Structural vector-autoregression models and dynamic stochastic general-equilibrium models with small numbers of variables are often practically preferred to ones with large numbers. The distinction between endogenous variables determined within a causal system and exogenous variables determined independently of the causal system suggests a partitioning of the world into distinct subsystems. This paper will explore this tension. I advocate a structural account of causation grounded in Herbert Simon’s "Causal Order and Identifiability" (1953), which defines cause with reference to complete systems. But any workable causal epistemology must deal with incomplete systems and piecemeal evidence. The main formal focus of the paper is to better understand the constraints that a structural account of causation places on the freedom to model complex or lower-order systems as simpler or higher-order systems. The main epistemological focus is to understand how and to what degree piecemeal evidence can be incorporated into a structural account.

Download Info

If you experience problems downloading a file, check if you have the proper application to view it first. In case of further problems read the IDEAS help page. Note that these files are not on the IDEAS site. Please be patient as the files may be large.
File URL: http://ssrn.com/abstract=1735588
File Function: main text
Download Restriction: no

Bibliographic Info

Paper provided by Duke University, Department of Economics in its series Working Papers with number 11-01.

as in new window
Length: 34
Date of creation: 2011
Date of revision:
Handle: RePEc:duk:dukeec:11-01

Contact details of provider:
Postal: Department of Economics Duke University 213 Social Sciences Building Box 90097 Durham, NC 27708-0097
Phone: (919) 660-1800
Fax: (919) 684-8974
Web page: http://econ.duke.edu/

Related research

Keywords: structural account; causation; causal order; Nancy Cartwright; James Woodward; Herbert Simon; manipulability account; causal structure; identity; independence; modularity;

Find related papers by JEL classification:

This paper has been announced in the following NEP Reports:

References

No references listed on IDEAS
You can help add them by filling out this form.

Citations

Lists

This item is not listed on Wikipedia, on a reading list or among the top items on IDEAS.

Statistics

Access and download statistics

Corrections

When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:duk:dukeec:11-01

For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: (Department of Economics Webmaster).

If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

If references are entirely missing, you can add them using this form.

If the full references list an item that is present in RePEc, but the system did not link to it, you can help with this form.

If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.