Justin Esarey
Biographic Data
| ID | 4122415 |
|---|---|
| NAME | Justin Esarey |
| GIVEN NAMES | Justin |
| FAMILY NAME | Esarey |
| SIGNATURE | ESAREY J |
| AFFILIATIONS | Rice University, Houston, TX, USA |
| VERIFIED | No |
| TOTAL WORKS | 17 |
| TOTAL CITATIONS | 575 |
| AUTHOR COUNT | 17 |
| EDITOR COUNT | 0 |
| FIRST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2008 |
| LATEST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2026 |
| H-INDEX | 9 |
Measuring Changes in Corruption Over Time
How confident should we be in the answers we get when using existing measures of corruption? Scholars routinely rely on country-level corruption indices to study democratic accountability, representation, development, and institutional reform. Yet a great deal of research argues that country-level corruption indicators are incomparable to each other and over time. We present evidence that these indicators all track a shared component identifiable…
Practical and Effective Approaches to Dealing With Clustered Data
Cluster-robust standard errors (as implemented by the eponymous cluster option in Stata) can produce misleading inferences when the number of clusters G is small, even if the model is consistent and there are many observations in each cluster. Nevertheless, political scientists commonly employ this method in data sets with few clusters. The contributions of this paper are: (a) developing new and easy-to-use Stata and R packages that implement alt…
Estimating Causal Relationships Between Women’s Representation in Government and Corruption
Does increasing the representation of women in government lead to less corruption, or does corruption prevent the election of women? Are these effects large enough to be substantively meaningful? Some research suggests that having women in legislatures reduces corruption levels, with a variety of theoretical rationales offered to explain the finding. Other research suggests that corruption is a deterrent to women’s representation because it reinf…
Are Papers Written by Women Authors Cited Less Frequently
Dion, Sumner, and Mitchell (2018) find that a published article is more likely to cite at least one female-authored paper if that article is itself authored by women. To complement their work, we study the number of times that an article in their data set is cited given that it has at least one female author. We find that articles with at least one female author are cited no more or less often than male-authored articles once we control for the p…
Marginal Effects in Interaction Models: Determining and Controlling the False Positive Rate
When a researcher suspects that the marginal effect of [Formula: see text] on [Formula: see text] varies with [Formula: see text], a common approach is to plot [Formula: see text] at different values of [Formula: see text] along with a pointwise confidence interval generated using the procedure described in Brambor, Clark, and Golder to assess the magnitude and statistical significance of the relationship. Our article makes three contributions. F…
Women’s Representation, Accountability and Corruption in Democracies
At the turn of the twenty-first century, an important pair of studies established that greater female representation in government is associated with lower levels of perceived corruption in that government. But recent research finds that this relationship is not universal and questions why it exists. This article presents a new theory explaining why women’s representation is only sometimes related to lower corruption levels and provides evidence …
Fractionally Integrated Data and the Autodistributed Lag Model: Results from a Simulation Study
Two contributions in this issue, Grant and Lebo and Keele, Linn, and Webb, recommend using an ARFIMA model to diagnose the presence of and estimate the degree of fractional integration, then either (i) fractionally differencing the data before analysis or, (ii) for cointegrated variables, estimating a fractional error correction model. But Keele, Linn, and Webb also present evidence that ARFIMA models yield misleading indicators of the presence a…
Bias and Overconfidence in Parametric Models of Interactive Processes
We assess the ability of logit, probit and numerous other parametric models to test a hypothesis that two variables interact in influencing the probability that some event will occur [Pr(Y)] in what we believe is a very common situation: when one's theory is insufficiently strong to dictate a specific functional form for the data generating process. Using Monte Carlo analysis, we find that many models yield overconfident inferences by generating …
A Quantitative Method for Substantive Robustness Assessment
Empirical political science is not simply about reporting evidence; it is also about coming to conclusions on the basis of that evidence and acting on those conclusions. But whether a result is substantively significant––strong and certain enough to justify acting upon the belief that the null hypothesis is false––is difficult to objectively pin down, in part because different researchers have different standards for interpreting evidence. Instea…
Defining and Modeling State-Dependent Dynamic Systems
A state-dependent dynamic system is one in which (1) the marginal effect ofxonyat timet() depends on the prior value of the dependent variable, and (2) the persistence of the dependent variable () depends onxt. We present a methodological strategy for dealing with state-dependent dynamic systems and demonstrate the consequences of ignoring state-dependence. As an applied example, we find evidence of state-dependence in the relationship between pr…
Fairer Sex” or Purity Myth? Corruption, Gender, and Institutional Context
Recent research finds that states with more women involved in government are also less prone to corruption (Dollar, Fisman, and Gatti 2001; Swamy et al. 2001). But a review of experimental evidence indicates that “women are not necessarily more intrinsically honest or averse to corruption than men” in the laboratory or in the field (Frank, Lambsdorff, and Boehm 2011, 68). Rather, the attitudes and behaviors of women concerning corruption depend o…
Assessing Fit Quality and Testing for Misspecification in Binary-Dependent Variable Models
In this article, we present a technique and critical test statistic for assessing the fit of a binary-dependent variable model (e.g., a logit or probit). We examine how closely a model's predicted probabilities match the observed frequency of events in the data set, and whether these deviations are systematic or merely noise. Our technique allows researchers to detect problems with a model's specification that obscure substantive understanding of…
Social Insurance and Income Redistribution in a Laboratory Experiment
Why do some voters support income redistribution while others do not? Public assistance programs have two entangled effects on society: they equalize wealth, but they also cushion people against random catastrophes (like natural disasters). The authors conduct a laboratory experiment to determine how individuals’ responses to the environment are related to their self-expressed political ideology and their self-interest. The findings support the h…
Testing for Interaction in Binary Logit and Probit Models: Is a Product Term Essential
Political scientists presenting binary dependent variable (BDV) models often hypothesize that variables interact to influence the probability of an event, Pr(Y). The current typical approach to testing such hypotheses is (1) estimate a logit or probit model with a product term, (2) test the hypothesis by determining whether the coefficient for this term is statistically significant, and (3) characterize the nature of any interaction detected by d…
Reputation and Cooperation in Voluntary Exchanges: Comparing Local and Central Institutions
Our experimental study compares the effectiveness of three reputation mechanisms believed to enhance cooperation. Groups of 14 subjects repeatedly select partners, play two-person prisoner's dilemmas, and rely only on individual experience to find trustworthy exchange partners in the baseline condition. The local condition represents emergent, bottom-up networks that allow partners to voluntarily share recommendations. The central condition repre…
Strategic Interaction and Interstate Crises: A Bayesian Quantal Response Estimator for Incomplete Information Games
Private information characteristics like resolve and audience costs are powerful influences over strategic international behavior, especially crisis bargaining. As a consequence, states face asymmetric information when interacting with one another and will presumably try to learn about each others' private characteristics by observing each others' behavior. A satisfying statistical treatment would account for the existence of asymmetric informati…
A Dynamic Model of Generalized Social Trust
How does generalized social trust — a Trustor's willingness to allow anonymous Trustees to make decisions affecting the Trustor's own welfare without an enforceable contract or guarantee, despite the Trustees' incentives to exploit or defraud — come to predominate in a community? This article is organized around a theoretical argument about the dynamics of generalized trust. This argument is deduced from a formal model built on assumptions that a…
Testing for Interaction in Binary Logit and Probit Models: Is a Product Term Essential
Political scientists presenting binary dependent variable (BDV) models often hypothesize that variables interact to influence the probability of an event, Pr(Y). The current typical approach to testing such hypotheses is (1) estimate a logit or probit model with a product term, (2) test the hypothesis by determining whether the coefficient for this term is statistically significant, and (3) characterize the nature of any interaction detected by d…
Fairer Sex” or Purity Myth? Corruption, Gender, and Institutional Context
Recent research finds that states with more women involved in government are also less prone to corruption (Dollar, Fisman, and Gatti 2001; Swamy et al. 2001). But a review of experimental evidence indicates that “women are not necessarily more intrinsically honest or averse to corruption than men” in the laboratory or in the field (Frank, Lambsdorff, and Boehm 2011, 68). Rather, the attitudes and behaviors of women concerning corruption depend o…
Women’s Representation, Accountability and Corruption in Democracies
At the turn of the twenty-first century, an important pair of studies established that greater female representation in government is associated with lower levels of perceived corruption in that government. But recent research finds that this relationship is not universal and questions why it exists. This article presents a new theory explaining why women’s representation is only sometimes related to lower corruption levels and provides evidence …
Practical and Effective Approaches to Dealing With Clustered Data
Cluster-robust standard errors (as implemented by the eponymous cluster option in Stata) can produce misleading inferences when the number of clusters G is small, even if the model is consistent and there are many observations in each cluster. Nevertheless, political scientists commonly employ this method in data sets with few clusters. The contributions of this paper are: (a) developing new and easy-to-use Stata and R packages that implement alt…
Estimating Causal Relationships Between Women’s Representation in Government and Corruption
Does increasing the representation of women in government lead to less corruption, or does corruption prevent the election of women? Are these effects large enough to be substantively meaningful? Some research suggests that having women in legislatures reduces corruption levels, with a variety of theoretical rationales offered to explain the finding. Other research suggests that corruption is a deterrent to women’s representation because it reinf…
Marginal Effects in Interaction Models: Determining and Controlling the False Positive Rate
When a researcher suspects that the marginal effect of [Formula: see text] on [Formula: see text] varies with [Formula: see text], a common approach is to plot [Formula: see text] at different values of [Formula: see text] along with a pointwise confidence interval generated using the procedure described in Brambor, Clark, and Golder to assess the magnitude and statistical significance of the relationship. Our article makes three contributions. F…
Social Insurance and Income Redistribution in a Laboratory Experiment
Why do some voters support income redistribution while others do not? Public assistance programs have two entangled effects on society: they equalize wealth, but they also cushion people against random catastrophes (like natural disasters). The authors conduct a laboratory experiment to determine how individuals’ responses to the environment are related to their self-expressed political ideology and their self-interest. The findings support the h…
Fractionally Integrated Data and the Autodistributed Lag Model: Results from a Simulation Study
Two contributions in this issue, Grant and Lebo and Keele, Linn, and Webb, recommend using an ARFIMA model to diagnose the presence of and estimate the degree of fractional integration, then either (i) fractionally differencing the data before analysis or, (ii) for cointegrated variables, estimating a fractional error correction model. But Keele, Linn, and Webb also present evidence that ARFIMA models yield misleading indicators of the presence a…
Bias and Overconfidence in Parametric Models of Interactive Processes
We assess the ability of logit, probit and numerous other parametric models to test a hypothesis that two variables interact in influencing the probability that some event will occur [Pr(Y)] in what we believe is a very common situation: when one's theory is insufficiently strong to dictate a specific functional form for the data generating process. Using Monte Carlo analysis, we find that many models yield overconfident inferences by generating …
A Quantitative Method for Substantive Robustness Assessment
Empirical political science is not simply about reporting evidence; it is also about coming to conclusions on the basis of that evidence and acting on those conclusions. But whether a result is substantively significant––strong and certain enough to justify acting upon the belief that the null hypothesis is false––is difficult to objectively pin down, in part because different researchers have different standards for interpreting evidence. Instea…
Defining and Modeling State-Dependent Dynamic Systems
A state-dependent dynamic system is one in which (1) the marginal effect ofxonyat timet() depends on the prior value of the dependent variable, and (2) the persistence of the dependent variable () depends onxt. We present a methodological strategy for dealing with state-dependent dynamic systems and demonstrate the consequences of ignoring state-dependence. As an applied example, we find evidence of state-dependence in the relationship between pr…
Reputation and Cooperation in Voluntary Exchanges: Comparing Local and Central Institutions
Our experimental study compares the effectiveness of three reputation mechanisms believed to enhance cooperation. Groups of 14 subjects repeatedly select partners, play two-person prisoner's dilemmas, and rely only on individual experience to find trustworthy exchange partners in the baseline condition. The local condition represents emergent, bottom-up networks that allow partners to voluntarily share recommendations. The central condition repre…
Strategic Interaction and Interstate Crises: A Bayesian Quantal Response Estimator for Incomplete Information Games
Private information characteristics like resolve and audience costs are powerful influences over strategic international behavior, especially crisis bargaining. As a consequence, states face asymmetric information when interacting with one another and will presumably try to learn about each others' private characteristics by observing each others' behavior. A satisfying statistical treatment would account for the existence of asymmetric informati…
A Dynamic Model of Generalized Social Trust
How does generalized social trust — a Trustor's willingness to allow anonymous Trustees to make decisions affecting the Trustor's own welfare without an enforceable contract or guarantee, despite the Trustees' incentives to exploit or defraud — come to predominate in a community? This article is organized around a theoretical argument about the dynamics of generalized trust. This argument is deduced from a formal model built on assumptions that a…
Are Papers Written by Women Authors Cited Less Frequently
Dion, Sumner, and Mitchell (2018) find that a published article is more likely to cite at least one female-authored paper if that article is itself authored by women. To complement their work, we study the number of times that an article in their data set is cited given that it has at least one female author. We find that articles with at least one female author are cited no more or less often than male-authored articles once we control for the p…
Assessing Fit Quality and Testing for Misspecification in Binary-Dependent Variable Models
In this article, we present a technique and critical test statistic for assessing the fit of a binary-dependent variable model (e.g., a logit or probit). We examine how closely a model's predicted probabilities match the observed frequency of events in the data set, and whether these deviations are systematic or merely noise. Our technique allows researchers to detect problems with a model's specification that obscure substantive understanding of…
Strategic Interaction and Interstate Crises: A Bayesian Quantal Response Estimator for Incomplete Information Games
Private information characteristics like resolve and audience costs are powerful influences over strategic international behavior, especially crisis bargaining. As a consequence, states face asymmetric information when interacting with one another and will presumably try to learn about each others' private characteristics by observing each others' behavior. A satisfying statistical treatment would account for the existence of asymmetric informati…
A Dynamic Model of Generalized Social Trust
How does generalized social trust — a Trustor's willingness to allow anonymous Trustees to make decisions affecting the Trustor's own welfare without an enforceable contract or guarantee, despite the Trustees' incentives to exploit or defraud — come to predominate in a community? This article is organized around a theoretical argument about the dynamics of generalized trust. This argument is deduced from a formal model built on assumptions that a…
Reputation and Cooperation in Voluntary Exchanges: Comparing Local and Central Institutions
Our experimental study compares the effectiveness of three reputation mechanisms believed to enhance cooperation. Groups of 14 subjects repeatedly select partners, play two-person prisoner's dilemmas, and rely only on individual experience to find trustworthy exchange partners in the baseline condition. The local condition represents emergent, bottom-up networks that allow partners to voluntarily share recommendations. The central condition repre…
Testing for Interaction in Binary Logit and Probit Models: Is a Product Term Essential
Political scientists presenting binary dependent variable (BDV) models often hypothesize that variables interact to influence the probability of an event, Pr(Y). The current typical approach to testing such hypotheses is (1) estimate a logit or probit model with a product term, (2) test the hypothesis by determining whether the coefficient for this term is statistically significant, and (3) characterize the nature of any interaction detected by d…
Assessing Fit Quality and Testing for Misspecification in Binary-Dependent Variable Models
In this article, we present a technique and critical test statistic for assessing the fit of a binary-dependent variable model (e.g., a logit or probit). We examine how closely a model's predicted probabilities match the observed frequency of events in the data set, and whether these deviations are systematic or merely noise. Our technique allows researchers to detect problems with a model's specification that obscure substantive understanding of…
Social Insurance and Income Redistribution in a Laboratory Experiment
Why do some voters support income redistribution while others do not? Public assistance programs have two entangled effects on society: they equalize wealth, but they also cushion people against random catastrophes (like natural disasters). The authors conduct a laboratory experiment to determine how individuals’ responses to the environment are related to their self-expressed political ideology and their self-interest. The findings support the h…
Fairer Sex” or Purity Myth? Corruption, Gender, and Institutional Context
Recent research finds that states with more women involved in government are also less prone to corruption (Dollar, Fisman, and Gatti 2001; Swamy et al. 2001). But a review of experimental evidence indicates that “women are not necessarily more intrinsically honest or averse to corruption than men” in the laboratory or in the field (Frank, Lambsdorff, and Boehm 2011, 68). Rather, the attitudes and behaviors of women concerning corruption depend o…
Defining and Modeling State-Dependent Dynamic Systems
A state-dependent dynamic system is one in which (1) the marginal effect ofxonyat timet() depends on the prior value of the dependent variable, and (2) the persistence of the dependent variable () depends onxt. We present a methodological strategy for dealing with state-dependent dynamic systems and demonstrate the consequences of ignoring state-dependence. As an applied example, we find evidence of state-dependence in the relationship between pr…
A Quantitative Method for Substantive Robustness Assessment
Empirical political science is not simply about reporting evidence; it is also about coming to conclusions on the basis of that evidence and acting on those conclusions. But whether a result is substantively significant––strong and certain enough to justify acting upon the belief that the null hypothesis is false––is difficult to objectively pin down, in part because different researchers have different standards for interpreting evidence. Instea…
Fractionally Integrated Data and the Autodistributed Lag Model: Results from a Simulation Study
Two contributions in this issue, Grant and Lebo and Keele, Linn, and Webb, recommend using an ARFIMA model to diagnose the presence of and estimate the degree of fractional integration, then either (i) fractionally differencing the data before analysis or, (ii) for cointegrated variables, estimating a fractional error correction model. But Keele, Linn, and Webb also present evidence that ARFIMA models yield misleading indicators of the presence a…
Bias and Overconfidence in Parametric Models of Interactive Processes
We assess the ability of logit, probit and numerous other parametric models to test a hypothesis that two variables interact in influencing the probability that some event will occur [Pr(Y)] in what we believe is a very common situation: when one's theory is insufficiently strong to dictate a specific functional form for the data generating process. Using Monte Carlo analysis, we find that many models yield overconfident inferences by generating …
Are Papers Written by Women Authors Cited Less Frequently
Dion, Sumner, and Mitchell (2018) find that a published article is more likely to cite at least one female-authored paper if that article is itself authored by women. To complement their work, we study the number of times that an article in their data set is cited given that it has at least one female author. We find that articles with at least one female author are cited no more or less often than male-authored articles once we control for the p…
Marginal Effects in Interaction Models: Determining and Controlling the False Positive Rate
When a researcher suspects that the marginal effect of [Formula: see text] on [Formula: see text] varies with [Formula: see text], a common approach is to plot [Formula: see text] at different values of [Formula: see text] along with a pointwise confidence interval generated using the procedure described in Brambor, Clark, and Golder to assess the magnitude and statistical significance of the relationship. Our article makes three contributions. F…
Women’s Representation, Accountability and Corruption in Democracies
At the turn of the twenty-first century, an important pair of studies established that greater female representation in government is associated with lower levels of perceived corruption in that government. But recent research finds that this relationship is not universal and questions why it exists. This article presents a new theory explaining why women’s representation is only sometimes related to lower corruption levels and provides evidence …
Practical and Effective Approaches to Dealing With Clustered Data
Cluster-robust standard errors (as implemented by the eponymous cluster option in Stata) can produce misleading inferences when the number of clusters G is small, even if the model is consistent and there are many observations in each cluster. Nevertheless, political scientists commonly employ this method in data sets with few clusters. The contributions of this paper are: (a) developing new and easy-to-use Stata and R packages that implement alt…
Estimating Causal Relationships Between Women’s Representation in Government and Corruption
Does increasing the representation of women in government lead to less corruption, or does corruption prevent the election of women? Are these effects large enough to be substantively meaningful? Some research suggests that having women in legislatures reduces corruption levels, with a variety of theoretical rationales offered to explain the finding. Other research suggests that corruption is a deterrent to women’s representation because it reinf…
Measuring Changes in Corruption Over Time
How confident should we be in the answers we get when using existing measures of corruption? Scholars routinely rely on country-level corruption indices to study democratic accountability, representation, development, and institutional reform. Yet a great deal of research argues that country-level corruption indicators are incomparable to each other and over time. We present evidence that these indicators all track a shared component identifiable…
Statistics (11 works) · Computer Science (10 works) · Econometrics (10 works) · Economics (10 works) · Mathematics (10 works) · Political science (9 works) · Law (8 works) · Law (7 works) · Psychology (6 works) · Social Psychology (5 works)