How do we know that something works? Impact evaluation for public policy studies and business experiments 2400-PLSM151B
The seminar will discuss applications of impact evaluation methods together with statistical theory behind them and statistical codes to apply in student own research. It will start with a review of the main impact assessment methods (randomized control trials, discontinuity regression design, difference-in-differences method, and propensity score matching and reweighting). Each method will be demonstrated with applications from business or public policy studies, which will be also presented by students. Students will also prepare their own analyzes adapting research examples and statistical codes to their own research topics. Practical applications will be demonstrated in the Stata program, but all methods can be easily applied in other statistical packages (R or Python). These examples can be then easily adapted by students for their own research on a chosen public program.
Type of course
Course coordinators
Learning outcomes
1) Basic knowledge of impact evaluation methods.
2) Ability to describe results of your own empirical research or conduct a review of existing research that will allow you to write your master thesis.
Knowledge:
Upon completion of the course, the student has in-depth knowledge of the subject matter of his or her own work, as well as public policies or business developments in the field of interest and the methods of impact assessment.
Skills:
Student can analyze data from empirical studies and critically evaluate statistical methods used in the analyzes.
Student can collect and conduct a review of literature.
The student can translate the research results into a language useful for public policy makers or business.
Student can describe research hypotheses, propose different methods of their verification, conduct their own research and describe in a clear way their results.
Social competence:
The student can communicate in a clear and concise manner the conclusions of the review and the results of his research.
The student can relate the results of her/his research to actual public policies and key policy debates.
Assessment criteria
Passing the seminar in the 1st semester: based on the outline of the master thesis and accepted research questions
Passing the seminar in the second semester: on the basis of progress in preparing the thesis
Bibliography
Impact Evaluation in Practice - Second Edition, World Bank. Available at: http://www.worldbank.org/en/programs/sief-trust-fund/publication/impact-evaluation-in-practice
Angrist, Pischke (2009) “Mostly Harmless Econometrics”
Additional information
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