3 ms·

With regards to your "alternate theory" here's a relevant line in the paper. > To further test the direction of causality for the results, we use a lag/lead an

With regards to your "alternate theory" here's a relevant line in the paper. > To further test the direction of causality for the results, we use a lag/lead analysis in the spirit of Granger [33, 34]. This method is used when the sample includes multiple years and uses both lead and lagged versions of the treatment variable (τ can be both positive and negative). I don't have enough experience in econometrics/statistics to evaluate this technique. But I would assume they've determined that the increase in crimes lags behind the increase in AirBNBs.

derbOac 5y ago
Those types of analyses are informative, but have problems related to the appropriate timescale for the causal processes involved, and can't rule out certain types of processes. For example, that type of analysis might suggest that the direct crime -> airbnb increase link is unlikely. However, it's possible that there's some other process that's more like simultaneous perceived neighborhood quality change -> airbnb increase and neighborhood quality change -> crime increase (basically third variable change). Reading this paper I was persuaded that tourism per se is maybe not the causal factor (although not convinced because their measures -- reviews -- were a little odd). However, I'm less convinced that airbnb rental per se is the causal factor. Maybe more closely related to whatever the causal factor(s) is(are) but not necessarily it.