Why Ask Why? Forward Causal Inference and Reverse Causal Questions

The statistical and econometrics literature on causality is more focused on \eects of causes" than on \causes of eects." That is, in the standard approach it is natural to study the eect of a treatment, but it is not in general possible to dene the causes of any particular outcome. This has led some researchers to dismiss the search for causes as \cocktail party chatter" that is outside the realm of science. We argue here that the search for causes can be understood within traditional statistical frameworks as a part of model checking and hypothesis generation. We argue that it can make sense to ask questions about the causes of eects, but the answers to these questions will be in terms of eects of causes.

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