Revisiting the Effect of Food Aid on Conflict : A Methodological Caution
A popular identification strategy in non-experimental panel data uses instrumental variables constructed by interacting exogenous but potentially spurious time series or spatial variables with endogenous exposure variables to generate identifying v...
| Main Authors: | , |
|---|---|
| Format: | Working Paper |
| Language: | English en_US |
| Published: |
World Bank, Washington, DC
2017
|
| Subjects: | |
| Online Access: | http://documents.worldbank.org/curated/en/723981503518830111/Revisiting-the-effect-of-food-aid-on-conflict-a-methodological-caution http://hdl.handle.net/10986/27978 |
| Summary: | A popular identification strategy in
non-experimental panel data uses instrumental variables
constructed by interacting exogenous but potentially
spurious time series or spatial variables with endogenous
exposure variables to generate identifying variation through
assumptions like those of differences-in-differences
estimators. Revisiting a celebrated study linking food aid
and conflict shows that this strategy is susceptible to bias
arising from spurious trends. Re-randomization and Monte
Carlo simulations show that the strategy identifies a
spurious relationship even when the true effect could be
non-causal or causal in the opposite direction, invalidating
the claim that aid causes conflict and providing a caution
for similar strategies. |
|---|