The author defines the concept of identification and explains what 'goes wrong' with some nonrecursive models to make them nonidentified. He provides various tests which can be used to determine whether a nonrecursive model is identified, and reviews common techniques for estimating the parameters of an identified model.

Nonrecursive Models is a clear and concise introduction to the estimation and assessment of nonrecursive simultaneous equation models. This unique monograph gives practical advice on the specification and identification of simultaneous equation models, how to assess the quality of the estimates, and how to correctly interpret results.

Emphasizing causation as a functional relationship between variables, this book provides comprehensive coverage on the basics of SEM. It takes readers through the process of identifying, estimating, analyzing, and evaluating a range of models. The author discusses the history and philosophy of causality and its place in science and presents graph theory as a tool for the design and analysis of causal models. He explains how the algorithms in SEM are derived and how they work, covers various indices and tests for evaluating the fit of structural equation models to data, and explores recent research in graph theory, path tracing rules, and model evaluation.

Retains complete coverage of the first edition, while amplifying key areas such as direct/indirect effects, standardized/unstandardized variables, multicollinie-arity, and nonrecursive modeling.

Explores actual causality, and such related notions as degree of responsibility, degree of blame, and causal explanation. The goal is to arrive at a definition of causality that matches our natural language usage and is helpful, for example, to a jury deciding a legal case, a programmer looking for the line of code that cause some software to fail, or an economist trying to determine whether austerity caused a subsequent depression.

This book has been replaced by Principles and Practice of Structural Equation Modeling, Fifth Edition, ISBN 978-1-4625-5191-0.

Many analyses of time series data involve multiple, related variables. Modeling Multiple Time Series presents many specification choices and special challenges. This book reviews the main competing approaches to modeling multiple time series: simultaneous equations, ARIMA, error correction models, and vector autoregression. The text focuses on vector autoregression (VAR) models as a generalization of the other approaches mentioned. Specification, estimation, and inference using these models is discussed. The authors also review arguments for and against using multi-equation time series models. Two complete, worked examples show how VAR models can be employed. An appendix discusses software that can be used for multiple time series models and software code for replicating the examples is available. Key Features: * Offers a detailed comparison of different time series methods and approaches. * Includes a self-contained introduction to vector autoregression modeling. * Situates multiple time series modeling as a natural extension of commonly taught statistical models.

The application and interpretation of statistics are central to ecological study and practice. Ecologists are now asking more sophisticated questions than in the past. These new questions, together with the continued growth of computing power and the availability of new software, have created a new generation of statistical techniques. These have resulted in major recent developments in both our understanding and practice of ecological statistics. This novel book synthesizes a number of these changes, addressing key approaches and issues that tend to be overlooked in other books such as missing/censored data, correlation structure of data, heterogeneous data, and complex causal relationships. These issues characterize a large proportion of ecological data, but most ecologists' training in traditional statistics simply does not provide them with adequate preparation to handle the associated challenges. Uniquely, Ecological Statistics highlights the underlying links among many statistical approaches that attempt to tackle these issues. In particular, it gives readers an introduction to approaches to inference, likelihoods, generalized linear (mixed) models, spatially or phylogenetically-structured data, and data synthesis, with a strong emphasis on conceptual understanding and subsequent application to data analysis. Written by a team of practicing ecologists, mathematical explanations have been kept to the minimum necessary. This user-friendly textbook will be suitable for graduate students, researchers, and practitioners in the fields of ecology, evolution, environmental studies, and computational biology who are interested in updating their statistical tool kits. A companion web site provides example data sets and commented code in the R language.

Causality offers the first comprehensive coverage of causal analysis in many sciences, including recent advances using graphical methods. Pearl presents a unified account of the probabilistic, manipulative, counterfactual and structural approaches to causation, and devises simple mathematical tools for analyzing the relationships between causal connections, statistical associations, actions and observations. The book will open the way for including causal analysis in the standard curriculum of statistics, artificial intelligence ...

CAUSAL INFERENCE IN STATISTICS A Primer Causality is central to the understanding and use of data. Without an understanding of cause–effect relationships, we cannot use data to answer questions as basic as "Does this treatment harm or help patients?" But though hundreds of introductory texts are available on statistical methods of data analysis, until now, no beginner-level book has been written about the exploding arsenal of methods that can tease causal information from data. Causal Inference in Statistics fills that gap. Using simple examples and plain language, the book lays out how to define causal parameters; the assumptions necessary to estimate causal parameters in a variety of situations; how to express those assumptions mathematically; whether those assumptions have testable implications; how to predict the effects of interventions; and how to reason counterfactually. These are the foundational tools that any student of statistics needs to acquire in order to use statistical methods to answer causal questions of interest. This book is accessible to anyone with an interest in interpreting data, from undergraduates, professors, researchers, or to the interested layperson. Examples are drawn from a wide variety of fields, including medicine, public policy, and law; a brief introduction to probability and statistics is provided for the uninitiated; and each chapter comes with study questions to reinforce the readers understanding.