Hostname: page-component-cd9895bd7-lnqnp Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-12-25T08:41:25.386Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false

Do We Really Know the WTO Cures Cancer?

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  14 November 2016

Abstract

This article uses a replication experiment of ninety-four specifications from sixteen different studies to show the severity of the problem of selection on unobservables. Using a variety of approaches, it shows that membership in the General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade/World Trade Organization has a significant effect on a surprisingly high number of dependent variables (34 per cent) that have little or no theoretical relationship to the WTO. To make the exercise even more conservative, the study demonstrates that membership in a low-impact environmental treaty, the Convention on Trade in Endangered Species, yields similarly high false positive rates. The authors advocate theoretically informed sensitivity analysis, showing how prior theoretical knowledge conditions the crucial choice of covariates for sensitivity tests. While the current study focuses on international institutions, the arguments also apply to other subfields and applications.

Type
Articles
Copyright
© Cambridge University Press 2016 

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

Footnotes

*

Department of Political Science, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign (email: [email protected]); Department of Political Science, University of Pittsburgh (email: [email protected]); Department of Politics, Princeton University (email: [email protected]). We appreciate helpful advice from Marc Busch, Jake Bowers, William Clark, Mark Fredrickson, Kristian Skrede Gleditsch, Emilie Hafner-Burton, Sarah Hummel, In Song Kim, Moritz Marbach, Michael Miller, Dan Nielson, Dominik Schraff, Christopher Stanton and Dustin Tingley. We also appreciate comments from audiences at the International Political Economy Society, American Political Science Association, Political Economy of International Organizations and International Studies Association conferences, as well as the UCSD Workshop on International Law and Regulation and the Harvard Government Department 3005 Seminar participants. We appreciate the constructive comments from our editor at BJPS, Sona Golder, as well as from the anonymous reviewers. Data replication sets are available at http://dataverse.harvard.edu/dataverse/BJPolS, and online appendices are available at http://dx.doi.org/doi:10.1017/S000712341600034X.

References

Allee, Todd L., and Scalera, Jamie E.. 2012. The Divergent Effects of Joining International Organizations: Trade Gains and the Rigors of WTO Accession. International Organization 66 (2):243276.Google Scholar
Altonji, Joseph G., Elder, Todd E., and Taber, Christopher R.. 2002. Selection on Observed and Unobserved Variables: Assessing the Effectiveness of Catholic Schools. Evanston, IL: Northwestern University.Google Scholar
Altonji, Joseph G., Elder, Todd E., and Taber, Christopher R.. 2005. Selection on Observed and Unobserved Variables: Assessing the Effectiveness of Catholic Schools. Journal of Political Economy 113 (1):151184.Google Scholar
Angrist, Joshua D., and Krueger, Alan B.. 1999. Empirical Strategies in Labor Economics. Handbook of Labor Economics 3:12771366.Google Scholar
Bertrand, Marianne, Duflo, Esther, and Mullainathan, Sendhil. 2004. How Much Should We Trust Difference-in-Differences Estimates? Quarterly Journal of Economics 119 (1):249275.Google Scholar
Blackwell, Matthew. 2014. A Selection Bias Approach to Sensitivity Analysis for Causal Effects. Political Analysis 22 (2):169182.Google Scholar
Clarke, Kevin A. 2005. The Phantom Menace: Omitted Variable Bias in Econometric Research. Conflict Management and Peace Science 22 (4):341352.Google Scholar
Clarke, Kevin A. 2009. Return of the Phantom Menace: Omitted Variable Bias in Political Research. Conflict Management and Peace Science 26 (1):4666.Google Scholar
Davis, Christina, and Wilf, Meredith. 2011. Joining the Club: Accession to the GATT/WTO, Working Paper. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University.Google Scholar
Downs, George W., Rocke, David M., and Barsoom, Peter N.. 1996. Is the Good News About Compliance Good News About Cooperation? International Organization 50 (3):379406.Google Scholar
Gerring, John, Thacker, Strom C., and Moreno, Carola. 2005. Centripetal Democratic Governance: A Theory and Global Inquiry. The American Political Science Review 99 (4):567581.Google Scholar
Ho, Daniel E., Imai, Kosuke, King, Gary, and Stuart, Elizabeth A.. 2007. Matching as Nonparametric Preprocessing for Reducing Model Dependence in Parametric Causal Inference. Political Analysis 15 (3):199236.Google Scholar
Imai, Kosuke, Keele, Luke, Tingley, Dustin, and Yamamoto, Teppei. 2011. Unpacking the Black Box of Causality: Learning About Causal Mechanisms From Experimental and Observational Studies. American Political Science Review 105:765789.Google Scholar
Imai, Kosuke, Keele, Luke, and Yamamoto, Teppei. 2010. Identification, Inference and Sensitivity Analysis for Causal Mediation Effects. Statistical Science 25 (1):5171.Google Scholar
Imbens, Guido W. 2003. Sensitivity to Exogeneity Assumptions in Program Evaluation. The American Economic Review 93 (2):126132.Google Scholar
Keele, Luke. 2015. The Statistics of Causal Inference: A View From Political Methodology. Political Analysis 23 (3):313335.Google Scholar
Leuven, Edwin, and Siansei, Barbara. 2003. Psmatch2: Stata Module to Perform Full Mahalanobis and Propensity Score Matching, Common Support Graphing, and Covariate Imbalance Testing (Version 4.0.11).Google Scholar
Lupu, Yonatan. 2013. The Informative Power of Treaty Commitment: Using the Spatial Model to Address Selection Effects. American Journal of Political Science 57 (4):912925.Google Scholar
Manski, Charles F. 1990. Nonparametric Bounds on Treatment Effects. The American Economic Review 80 (2):319323.Google Scholar
Mebane, Walter, and Poast, Paul. 2013. Causal Inference Without Ignorability: Identification With Nonrandom Assignment and Missing Treatment Data. Political Analysis 21 (2):233251.Google Scholar
Miller, Michael. 2015. The Uses and Abuses of Matching in Political Science, Working Paper. Washington, DC: George Washington University.Google Scholar
Oster, Emily. 2014. Unobservable Selection and Coefficient Stability: Theory and Evidence, Working Paper. Chicago: University of Chicago Booth School of Business.Google Scholar
Pearl, Judea. 2000. Causality: Models, Reasoning, and Inference. New York and Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar
Pelc, Krzysztof J. 2011. Why do Some Countries get Better WTO Accession Terms Than Others? International Organization 65 (4):639672.Google Scholar
Plumper, Thomas, and Troeger, Vera E.. 2013. Not so Harmless After All: Fixed Effects as Identification Strategy. EPSA Conference Paper.Google Scholar
Rosenbaum, Paul R. 2002. Observational Studies. New York: Springer.Google Scholar
Rosenbaum, Paul R., and Rubin, Donald B.. 1983. The Central Role of the Propensity Score in Observational Studies for Causal Effects. Biometrika 70 (1):4155.Google Scholar
Sekhon, Jasjeet S. 2009. Opiates for the Matches: Matching Methods for Causal Inference. Annual Review of Political Science 12 (1):487508.Google Scholar
Simmons, Beth A. 2000. International Law and State Behavior: Commitment and Compliance in International Monetary Affairs. American Political Science Review 94 (4):819835.Google Scholar
Simmons, Beth A., and Hopkins, Daniel J.. 2005. The Constraining Power of International Treaties: Theory and Methods. American Political Science Review 99 (4):623631.Google Scholar
Spirtes, Peter, Glymour, Clark, and Scheines, Richard. 1993. Causation, Prediction, and Search. New York: Springer-Verlag.Google Scholar
Von Stein, Jana. 2005. Do Treaties Constrain or Screen? Selection Bias and Treaty Compliance. American Political Science Review 99 (4):611622.Google Scholar
Supplementary material: Link

Chaudoin et al. Dataset

Link
Supplementary material: PDF

Chaudoin supplementary material

Chaudoin supplementary material 1

Download Chaudoin supplementary material(PDF)
PDF 179.4 KB