STICERD Econometrics Seminar Series
Essential Concepts of Causal Inference: A remarkable history and an intriguing future
Donald Rubin (Harvard University)
Monday 13 May 2019 14:00 - 15:30
Many of our seminars and public events this year will continue as in person or as hybrid (online and in person) events. Please check our website listings and Twitter feed @STICERD_LSE for updates.
Unless otherwise specified, in-person seminars are open to the public. Please ensure you have informed the event contact as early as possible.
Those unable to join the seminars in-person are welcome to participate via zoom if the event is hybrid.
About this event
Causal inference is a major topic in any field that tries to understand the kinds of treatments (i.e., interventions) we humans are considering in order to effect particular changes in the world around us, whether those treatments involve business decisions, pharmaceuticals to ingest, educational programs to offer, military actions to take ÿ effectively everything that involves choices in our lives. Despite the ubiquity of this topic to the lives of unconscious and later conscious humans for tens of thousands of years, it has a remarkable history, with solid mathematical foundations beginning only in the early 20th century, with the development of crucial ideas tied to related ideas in physics, namely those arising in quantum mechanics. This formulation of causal inference has an intriguing future because of the increasing application of causal inference to treatments with conscious units, humans, despite its mathematical origins with unconscious units: plants, animals, industrial objects. Conscious units do not necessarily comply with their assigned treatments and can suffer from complications such as placebo effects; moreover, humans may depart from study protocols by dropping out early, or may use the internet to interfere with each other in ways that were considered impossible in the middle of the twentieth century. The proper handling of such complexities comprises an intriguing collection of topics,which are currently virtually unstudied with any mathematical rigor.
STICERD Econometrics seminars are held on Thursdays in term time at 14.00-15.30, in SAL 3.05, unless specified otherwise.
Seminar organisers: Dr Yike Wang, Professor Tai Otsu, and Dr Vassilis Hajivassiliou.
For further information please contact Sadia Ali: s.ali43@lse.ac.uk.
Please use this link to subscribe or unsubscribe to STICERD Econometrics mailing list (emetrics).