A Crash Course in Good and Bad Controls

Carlos Cinelli, Andrew Forney and Judea Pearl

Sociological Methods & Research, 2024, vol. 53, issue 3, 1071-1104

Abstract: Many students of statistics and econometrics express frustration with the way a problem known as “bad control†is treated in the traditional literature. The issue arises when the addition of a variable to a regression equation produces an unintended discrepancy between the regression coefficient and the effect that the coefficient is intended to represent. Avoiding such discrepancies presents a challenge to all analysts in the data intensive sciences. This note describes graphical tools for understanding, visualizing, and resolving the problem through a series of illustrative examples. By making this “crash course†accessible to instructors and practitioners, we hope to avail these tools to a broader community of scientists concerned with the causal interpretation of regression models.

Keywords: causal inference; bad controls; back-door criterion; DAG; regression (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2024
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Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:sae:somere:v:53:y:2024:i:3:p:1071-1104

DOI: 10.1177/00491241221099552

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