Post-hoc logic is a logical fallacy in which the inferrer concludes that because A happened after B, B must have caused A. Consider the two following examples.
(a) In the years since the second wave of globalization took off in the 1970s, environmental regulations worldwide have become much tougher, and in industrial countries each category of manufacturing has become much less polluting (see Levinson, 2009, for U.S. evidence). Can we conclude from this that globalization caused environmentally friendly regulation? Or are there plausible alternative explanations?
(b) In the years since the Chinese economy opened to international trade in the 1980s, Chinese air pollution has become disastrously out of control (although the situation seems to be improving-see Dean and Lovely, 2010). From this can we conclude that globalization caused the Chinese pollution problem? Or are there plausible alternative explanations?