Empirical Evaluation of Economic Policies

This course is about the evaluation of economic policies in different areas of economics – labour market policies, health and education policies. This course will comprise a lecture and an exercise. The lecture will cover empirical methods required for policy analysis (e.g. difference-in-differences methods, instrumental variable estimation). The lecture will be based upon several influential papers from the respective area.

 In the exercise, students will then replicate papers from the literature using Stata. Students will be guided through the replication, and they will be provided with all or most of the Stata code.

Topics

1.0 Policy Evaluation in Economics
2.0 Rubin’s Causal Model
3.0 Randomized Controlled Trials
4.0 Regression
5.0 Instrumental Variables
6.0 Regression Discontinuity
7.0 Difference in Differences and Fixed Effects

Lecture
5 Feb 2024: 9:00 - 13:00 (room 4011/13, Esplanade 36)
6 Feb 2024: 9:00 - 13:00 (room 4011/13, Esplanade 36)
7 Feb 2024: 9:00 - 13:00 (room 4011/13, Esplanade 36)
8 Feb 2024: 9:00 - 13:00 (room 4011/13, Esplanade 36)
9 Feb 2024: 9:00 - 13:00 (room 4011/13, Esplanade 36)

Exercise
5 Feb 2024: 15:00 - 17:00 (room 4011/13, Esplanade 36)
6 Feb 2024: 15:00 - 17:00 (WiWi 1005, VMP 5)
7 Feb 2024: 15:00 - 17:00 (WiWi 1005, VMP 5)
8 Feb 2024: 15:00 - 17:00 (WiWi 2043/2047, VMP 5)
9 Feb 2024: 15:00 - 17:00 (WiWi 2043/2047, VMP 5)

Lecture
26 Feb 2024: 09:00 - 17:00 (room 4011/13, Esplanade 36)
27 Feb 2024: 09:00 - 17:00 (room 4011/13, Esplanade 36)

Evaluation:

The evaluation consists of a presentation of an economic paper from the area of policy evaluation (90 percent of the grade) as well as a discussion of another presentation (10 percent of the grade).