The “Causal Density” of Human Behavior

A piece by Jim Manzi in the City Journal explains why Keynesians and non-Keynesians will still be debating stimulus programs in the 22nd century: social science is inherently limited in situations where there is no counterfactual, because each data point is sui generis. In other words, a causal relationship that might hold under one set of circumstances may not hold under another set. In criminology research, even randomized experiments have not generated many reliable conclusions. Some examples of conclusions Manzi believes do hold up fairly well:

[W]ithin this universe of programs that are far more likely to fail than succeed, programs that try to change people are even more likely to fail than those that try to change incentives. A litany of program ideas designed to push welfare recipients into the workforce failed when tested in those randomized experiments of the welfare-reform era; only adding mandatory work requirements succeeded in moving people from welfare to work in a humane fashion. And mandatory work-requirement programs that emphasize just getting a job are far more effective than those that emphasize skills-building. Similarly, the list of failed attempts to change people to make them less likely to commit crimes is almost endless—prisoner counseling, transitional aid to prisoners, intensive probation, juvenile boot camps—but the only program concept that tentatively demonstrated reductions in crime rates in replicated RFTs was nuisance abatement, which changes the environment in which criminals operate.

HT: RealClearPolitics