ECON 664. Applied Cross-Sectional Methods.

With limited public resources, determining which programs, reforms, policies are beneficial, and at what cost, is crucial, and allows public policy to be driven by evidence. However, evaluating programs is made difficult by the “counterfactual problem”: one cannot observe the outcomes or behavior of a participant, had (s)he not participated. This course will describe the standard OLS model, its limitations, and an improvement (panel data models). This course will then present the state-of-the-art empirical techniques used by economists to address the counterfactual issue (randomized experiments, instrumental variables, difference-in-differences, regression discontinuity design; and time permitting selection models and matching). For each of these approaches, we will give the basic intuition, discuss the necessary assumptions, present the strengths and weaknesses, and analyze applications drawn from the literature. Moreover, each technique will be implemented by the students in hands-on Stata sessions.