Thursday, August 02, 2012

Wow!! Doug Hibbs basically calls the election for Mittens!

Here is the money quote:

"according  to  the  Bread  and  Peace  model  per  capita  real   income  growth  rates  must  average out  at  nearly  6  percent  after  2012:q2  for  Obama  to  have  a   decent  chance  of  re-­‐election."

You can get to the whole paper from here (and obviously a hat tip goes to Brendan).

Beyond this bombshell, the paper is well worth reading as Hibbs excoriates his competitors for using ad-hoc and ex-post dummy variables as well as endogenous approval ratings as explanatory variables in their vote-share equations.

6 comments:

  1. Seems like he's conflating prediction and explanation. Who cares if approval is endogenous if it helps us predict. I've some of his competitors speak, and mostly they don't frame their work in terms of pinning down causal effects.

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  2. I took an Econometrics course back in 2004 where we read Fair's book and came up with our own models to predict presidential elections [we could choose national vote percentage or electoral college outcome]. I had three variables and disposable income growth for the preceding eight quarters was one the variables I used, too. It turns out that another statistically significant variable (that also explained a great deal with a substantial R-square) was a 28 year cycle where the parties' electoral votes from seven election cycles in the past explained a whole lot about the electoral college outcome 28 years into the future. 1984 was a pretty good year for Republicans, wasn't it?

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  3. politicalEconomist10:09 AM, August 03, 2012

    Makes about as much sense as predicting hurricanes with straight lines.

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