Panel Data Analysis in Comparative Politics: Linking Method to Theory

By Thomas Plümper, Vera E. Troeger, P. Manow. 2005

700 citations recorded by the source corpus.

Re-analyzing a study of Garrett and Mitchell ('Globalization, government spend- ing and taxation in the OECD', European Journal of Political Research 39(2) (2001): 145-177), this article addresses four potential sources of problems in panel data analyses with a lagged dependent variable and period and unit dummies (the de facto Beck-Katz standard). These are: absorption of cross-sectional variance by unit dummies, absorption of time-series variance by the lagged dependent variable and period dummies, mis-specifica- tion of the lag structure, and neglect of parameter slope heterogeneity. Based on this dis- cussion, we suggest substantial changes of the estimation approach and the estimated model. Employing our preferred methodological stance, we demonstrate that Garrett and Mitchell's findings are not robust. Instead, we show that partisan politics and socioeconomic factors such as aging and unemployment as expected by theorists have a strong impact on the time- series and cross-sectional variance in government spending.

Subfields: Economics and Econometrics, Political Science and International Relations

View Paper: https://www.semanticscholar.org/paper/f3f602256a76f5b47bec7c64f465d9dbecac4e2d

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Citations in the corpus

War and the World Economy (2006, background): “However, the question of the appropriate lag length is crucial in first-difference regressions (Plümper, Troeger, and Manow 2005).”
Income inequality and redistribution in post-industrial democracies: demographic, economic and political determinants (2014, background): “…depress the significance of other variables, particularly if the initial level of the variable of interest has an impact on the dependent variable (Plumper et al., 2005), which in this case it does because the accumulated level of left government at the beginning of the data series significantly…”
Efficient Estimation of Time-Invariant and Rarely Changing Variables in Finite Sample Panel Analyses with Unit Fixed Effects (2007, background): “In a substantive perspective, this article contributes to an ongoing debate about the pros and cons of FE models (Beck 2001; Beck and Katz 2001; Green, Kim, and Yoon 2001; Plümper, Troeger, and Manow 2005; Wilson and Butler 2007).”
Social democrats and the new partisan politics of public investment in education (2009, neutral): “yet to emerge, as evinced by current discussions in the relevant literature (Kittel and Winner 2005; Plümper et al. 2005; Plümper and Troeger 2007).”
The Politics of Welfare State Retrenchment: A Literature Review (2006, background): “…or capital mobility on social expenditure (e.g. Garrett/Mitchell 2001), but the causal effects are often quite small, as well as highly contingent on the model specification and on exactly how 'globalization' is measured (Swank 2002; Brady et al. 2004; Kittel/Winner 2005; Plümper et al. 2005).”
The Estimation of Time-Invariant Variables in Panel Analyses with Unit Fixed Effects (2004, background): “(Beramendi/ Cusack 2004: 29) We do not agree, but that’s another issue (see Plümper et al. 2004).”
Partisan Politics: The Empirical Evidence from OECD Panel Studies (2017, neutral): “…one may well arrive at 5 For studies on coalition governments of leftwing and rightwing parties, see, for example, Helm and Neugart (2013) 7 wrong conclusions when econometric models are not well specified has been discussed, for example, by Kittel and Winner (2005) and Plümper et al. (2005).”