倾向评分匹配法的基本逻辑、应用领域和发展趋势

A New Method to Find Causal Relationship: Basic Logic,Application Field and Future of Propensity Score Matching

寻找因果关系是社会科学研究的中心任务。倾向评分匹配法是近年来在社会科学领域兴起的一种新的推断因果关系的方法,它通过计算倾向评分并将实验组与对照组中倾向评分水平相当的个体进行匹配,从而实现对因果关系的推断。文章通过介绍倾向评分匹配法的基本逻辑与实施步骤,描述了该方法的总体面貌,并将其与回归中断设计和工具变量两种方法进行比较,以体现其在推断因果关系上的优越性。在此基础上,文章就倾向评分匹配法在国内外的最新应用进行了综述,并指出了该方法的局限性与未来的发展趋势。

Finding the correct causal relationship is the most important mission of social sciences research. The Propensity Score Matching which is a new method to deduce causal relationship prevails recent years. It matches the entity from treatment group and control group according to the propensity scorematehing （PSM）, so can we deduce a correct causal relationship. The article introduces the basic logic and implements proce- dure of PSM, compare it with regression discontinuity design and instrumental variable to show the advantage that PSM have. The article also takes the development of PSM into consideration, and point out its drawback and future finally.