Hack Your Way to Scientific Glory
FiveThirtyEight offers a guide for social scientists analyzing political parties' impact on the U.S. economy since 1948. Real data, statistical significance, key factors, influential positions, and monthly plotting are recommended. Scholars and data sources are referenced.
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FiveThirtyEight provides a guide for social scientists aiming to analyze the impact of political parties on the U.S. economy since 1948. Researchers are encouraged to use real data to establish statistical significance, focusing on factors like employment, inflation, GDP, and stock prices. The guide suggests weighting more influential political positions and excluding economic recessions. By plotting data points monthly, researchers can assess if the economy performs better or worse under different parties. To achieve publishable results, a p-value of 0.05 or lower is necessary. The article references scholars like Larry Bartels, Alan Blinder, and Mark Watson for further reading on this topic, citing data sources such as the @unitedstates Project, National Governors Association, Bureau of Labor Statistics, Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis, and Yahoo Finance.
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5 commentsHow can we shift the academic incentives away from "publish or perish" toward promoting transparency and rigorous methodology in research? Are any of the current attempts moving the needle?
- given that we are looking at a national scale, use only national politicians
- use the components from Macroeconomics 101: exclude inflation as that’s on the Fed, exclude stocks as too conflated with FX and international investing alternatives
- don’t needlessly withhold data
Tried one hypothesis, so p-value of 0.04 is accurate. Still OK to explore if you Bonferroni correct the p-Val afterwards
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