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Political Analysis Advance Access originally published online on April 2, 2007
Political Analysis 2007 15(4):465-482; doi:10.1093/pan/mpm008
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© The Author 2007. Published by Oxford University Press on behalf of the Society for Political Methodology. All rights reserved. For Permissions, please email: journals.permissions@oxfordjournals.org

In Defense of Comparative Statics: Specifying Empirical Tests of Models of Strategic Interaction

Clifford J. Carrubba and Amy Yuen

Department of Political Science, Emory University, Atlanta, GA 30322
e-mail: ayuen{at}emory.edu

Christopher Zorn

Department of Political Science, University of South Carolina, Columbia, SC 29208
e-mail: zorn{at}sc.edu

e-mail: ccarrub{at}emory.edu (corresponding author)

Beginning in 1999, Curtis Signorino challenged the use of traditional logits and probits analysis for testing discrete-choice, strategic models. Signorino argues that the complex parametric relationships generated by even the simplest strategic models can lead to wildly inaccurate inferences if one applies these traditional approaches. In their stead, Signorino proposes generating stochastic formal models, from which one can directly derive a maximum likelihood estimator. We propose a simpler, alternative methodology for theoretically and empirically accounting for strategic behavior. In particular, we propose carefully and correctly deriving one's comparative statics from one's formal model, whether it is stochastic or deterministic does not particularly matter, and using standard logit or probit estimation techniques to test the predictions. We demonstrate that this approach performs almost identically to Signorino's more complex suggestion.

Authors' note: We would like to thank Randy Calvert, Mark Hallerberg, Andrew Martin, Eric Reinhardt, Chris Stanton, and Craig Volden for their valuable feedback on this project. All remaining errors are our own. Replication materials are available at the Political Analysis Web site.


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