Replication data for: Empirical vs. Theoretical Claims about Extreme Counterfactuals: A Response

A response to Sambanis and Michaelides, "A Comment on Diagnostic Tools for Counterfactual Inference", which was a comment on: Gary King and Langche Zeng. 2006. " The Dangers of Extreme Counterfactuals," Political Analysis, 14, 2, Pp. 131-159. In response to the data-based measures of model dependence proposed in King and Zeng (2006), Sambanis and Michaelides (2008) propose alternative measures that rely upon assumptions untestable in observational data. If these assumptions are correct, then their measures are appropriate and ours, based solely on the empirical data, may be too conser vative. If instead and as is usually the case, the researcher is not certain of the precise functional form of the data generating process, the distribution from whic h the data are drawn, and the applicability of these modeling assumptions to new counterfactuals, then the data-based measures proposed in King and Zeng (2006) are much preferred. After all, the point of model dependence checks is to verify empirically, rather than to stipulate by assumption, the effects of modeling assumptions on counterfactual inferences.