ABSTRACT

Structural Causal Modeling (SCM) is an approach to causal inference closely associated with Judea Pearl and given an accessible instroduction in [Pearl, J., & Mackenzie, D. (2018). The book of why: The new science of cause and effect. Basic Books]. It is highly popular outside of economics, but has seen relatively little application within it. This paper briefly introduces the main concepts of SCM through the lens of whether applied economists are likely to find marginal benefit in these methods beyond standard economic approaches to causal inference. The most promising areas are those where SCM's causal diagrams alone offer significant value: covariate selection, the development of placebo tests, causal discovery, and identification in complex models.

摘要

结构因果建模 (SCM) 是一种与 Judea Pearl 密切相关的因果推理方法，并在 [Pearl, J., & Mackenzie, D. (2018)] 中提供了易于理解的介绍。为什么之书：新的因果科学。基础书籍]。它在经济学之外非常流行，但在经济学中的应用却相对较少。本文从应用经济学家是否有可能在这些方法中发现超越因果推理的标准经济学方法的边际收益的角度简要介绍了 SCM 的主要概念。最有前途的领域是 SCM 的因果图单独提供重要价值的领域：协变量选择、安慰剂测试的开发、因果发现和复杂模型中的识别。