Forecast-Necessary Causal Discovery for Nonlinear Political Panel Data: Feedback, Functional Form, and the Dynamics of Democratization
非线性政治面板中的预测必要性与因果发现:民主化的反馈和动态
A non-significant coefficient in a dynamic panel model need not imply the absence of a relationship. It may instead reflect heterogeneous effects averaged toward zero, reciprocal dynamics overlooked by a recursive specification, or relationships masked by the omission of correlated covariates. Standard linear estimators cannot distinguish among these possibilities. We develop an inferential workflow for political panel data that resolves this ambiguity by combining flexible…