Political Analysis Advance Access originally published online on January 4, 2007
Political Analysis 2007 15(2):101-123; doi:10.1093/pan/mpl012
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A Lot More to Do: The Sensitivity of Time-Series Cross-Section Analyses to Simple Alternative Specifications
Department of Political Science, Brigham Young University, 732 SWKT, Provo, UT 84602
Department of Political Science, Stanford University, Encina Hall West, Room 100, Stanford, CA 94305
e-mail: daniel_butler{at}stanford.edu
e-mail: sven_wilson{at}byu.edu (corresponding author)
In 1995, Beck and Katz (B&K) instructed the profession on "What to do (and not to do) with time-series, cross-section data," and almost instantly their prescriptions became the new orthodoxy for practitioners. Our assessment of the intellectual aftermath of this paper, however, does not inspire confidence in the conclusions reached during the past decade. The 195 papers we reviewed show a widespread failure to diagnose and treat common problems of time-series, cross-section (TSCS) data analysis. To show the importance of the consequences of the B&K assumptions, we replicate eight papers in prominent journals and find that simple alternative specifications often lead to drastically different conclusions. Finally, we summarize many of the statistical issues relative to TSCS data and show that there is a lot more to do with TSCS data than many researchers have apparently assumed.
Authors' note: We greatly benefited from the comments of Neil Beck, Richard Butler, Damon Cann, Scott Cooper, Jay Goodliffe, Donald Green, Darren Hawkins, Daniel Nielson, and Michael Thies. Joseph Burton provided excellent research assistance. We also express thanks to the authors who graciously provided data for this study and subjected themselves to our critique: Michael Campenni, Gary Cox, M. V. Hood, Quentin Kidd, David Lanoue, Karl Moene, Irwin Morris, Jeffrey Pickering, Steven Poe, Gary Reich, Frances Rosenbluth, Steven Saideman, Samuel Stanton, Neal Tate, Michael Thies, Michael Wallerstein, and Nikolas Zahariadis. These data were provided to us either directly or through a publicly available Web site. In either case, the authors' cooperation is commendable and appreciated. Supplementary materials for this article are available on the Political Analysis Web site.
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