The best empirical research in political science clearly defines substantive parameters of interest, presents a set of assumptions that guarantee its identification, and uses an appropriate estimator. We argue for the importance of explicitly integrating rigorous theory into this process and focus on the advantages of doing so. By integrating theoretical structure into one's empirical strategy, researchers can quantify the effects of competing mechanisms, consider the ex-ante effects of new policies, extrapolate findings to new environments, estimate model-specific theoretical parameters, evaluate the fit of a theoretical model, and test competing models that aim to explain the same phenomena. As a guide to such a methodology, we provide an overview of structural estimation, including formal definitions, implementation suggestions, examples, and comparisons to other methods.

翻译：政治科学的最佳实证研究明确界定了关注的实质性参数,提出了一套保证其识别的假设,并使用了适当的估计者。我们主张将严格理论明确纳入这一进程的重要性,并注重这样做的好处。通过将理论结构纳入个人的经验战略,研究人员可以量化竞争机制的效果,考虑新政策的事先效果,将调查结果外推到新环境,估计具体模型的理论参数,评价理论模型的合适性,测试旨在解释相同现象的竞争性模型。作为这一方法的指南,我们提供了结构估计的概览,包括正式定义、实施建议、实例和与其他方法的比较。