Marginal Odds Ratios: What They Are, How to Compute Them, and Why Sociologists Might Want to Use Them

Kristian Karlson and Ben Jann

No 45, University of Bern Social Sciences Working Papers from University of Bern, Department of Social Sciences

Abstract: As sociologists are increasingly turning away from using odds ratios, reporting average marginal effects is becoming more popular. We aim to restore the use of odds ratios in sociological research by introducing marginal odds ratios. Unlike conventional odds ratios, marginal odds ratios are not affected by omitted covariates in arbitrary ways. Marginal odds ratios thus behave like average marginal effects but retain the relative effect interpretation of the odds ratio. We argue that marginal odds ratios are well suited for much sociological inquiry and should be reported as a complement to the reporting of average marginal effects. We define marginal odds ratios in terms of potential outcomes, show their close relationship to average marginal effects, and discuss their potential advantages over conventional odds ratios. We also briefly discuss how to estimate marginal odds ratios and present examples comparing marginal odds ratios to conventional odds ratios and average marginal effects.

Keywords: odds ratio; logit; logistic model; regression; marginal effects; average marginal effects; confounding; mediation (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: C01 C25 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Pages: 25 pages
Date: 2023-01-31
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-ecm
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations:

Downloads: (external link)
https://boris.unibe.ch/178165/1/karlson-jann-2023-MOR.pdf First version, 2023 (application/pdf)
https://osf.io/xkre6/ Replication package (text/html)

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:bss:wpaper:45

Access Statistics for this paper

More papers in University of Bern Social Sciences Working Papers from University of Bern, Department of Social Sciences
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Ben Jann ().