Working Paper #770
Causal Inference in Urban and Regional Economics
Nathaniel Baum-Snow · Fernando Vendramel Ferreira
Demographics Development Urban
Recovery of causal relationships in data is an essential part of scholarly inquiry in the social sciences. This chapter discusses strategies that have been successfully used in urban and regional economics for recovering such causal relationships. Essential to any successful empirical inquiry is careful consideration of the sources of variation in the data that identify parameters of interest. Interpretation of such parameters should take into account the potential for their heterogeneity as a function of both observables and unobservables.