Econometrics of Program Evaluation

Objectives

This course will introduce students to the applications of the empirical techniques for estimating the causal effect of economic and social programs. The lecture topics cover the estimation of causal treatment effects using advanced method of randomized field experiment and instrumental variables. The objective of the course is to provide the students a solid theoretical understanding of empirical challenges that each technique aims to solve, with strong emphasis on learning from the leading applications of the economics and marketing research. Through repeated exposure to frontier empirical studies by world-leading experts, students can gain an insight on how they developed innovative techniques to wrestle with new challenging problems.

Course outline

1. Causal effect and estimation strategies: a review
– Impact of immigration in European economies

2. Designing experiment for measuring social treatment effect
– Mask effectiveness and coronavirus: a CDC report
– Deworming treatment and school attendance in Kenya
– Fair attendance and retirement savings decision

3. Socio-temporal instruments as Panel IV method
– Airbnb entry and residential housing market

4. Heterogeneous treatment effect
– Two-way fixed effects estimator
– Robust DID estimator

Prerequisites

​Econometrics 1, 2​