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Introductory Econometrics

10.5 hours on-demand video

$ 19.99

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Brief Introduction

An Introduction to Empirical Methods in Economics

Description

All happy students are alike, each unhappy student is unhappy in its own way. Fundamentally, happy students are the students that have internalised the course’s material so profoundly that, when assigned an individual project or task (may that be coming from a professor or an employer), can carry it out, completely independently, from A to Z in a way that is both perfectly rigorous and more-or-less innovative.

The What

The purpose of this course is to get you started towards that lofty yet achievable target of knowing what's what when it comes to Econometrics. A sound mastery of Econometrics is fundamental for two reasons. First, today, as in Angrist et al. (2017), more than 50% of Economics research published in the best Journals of the profession have some empirical component (more often than not, they are entirely empirical): a sound mastery of Econometrics allows you to have a sense of what are the frontier questions in the field and, more importantly, what are the answers and how those answers come about. Second, the explosion in Applied Economics is part of the broader trend of increasing computational power and data availability: a sound mastery of Econometrics allows you to dare to ask your questions and provide, to yourself and to everybody else, some importantly new answers.

This is a course about Introductory Econometrics. As such, its purpose is to lay the foundations for deeper and more comprehensive studies in Econometrics. Hence, I spend little time dwelling on the mathematics and more time trying to convey the intuition, the concept and, essentially, why should you care. Also, I go as slow as possible in the explanations to give the opportunity to both fast and slow learners to benefit from the course: it is possible to increase the speed in case of need. I think it’s, didactically, the best approach, probably because I have been on the other side of the desk when a bad approach was used: Econometrics courses often come as a shock to students because the professors (usually because of time constraints) have to introduce the concepts and the mathematics at the same time and students find themselves juggling both. In light of my personal experience, and the experiences of other friends, I think it’s better for students walking into a proper Intermediate Econometrics course to have already understood the concepts and the most basic mathematical elements, so that during the course they can focus, exclusively, on the mathematics. Because it’s an Introductory Econometrics course, I expect nothing more than some basic high school algebra and a course of Introductory Statistics under your belt. And the what's what that I want to share with you in this course is what follows: single linear regression models, multiple linear regression models, logistic regression models, common issues (misspecification, heteroskedasticity, multicollinearity, endogeneity), a 5-steps, model-building method to put all the material discussed in this course into action, to be able to ask and answer what are your important and interesting questions.

The Who

Having established the importance of the what, the question as to why you would want to be introduced to it by me over somebody else is legitimate. I am in the process of completing my second MSc at the London School of Economics and Political Science after having completed, always at the LSE, an MSc in Political Economics and, before that, a BSc in Economic Sciences (Summa Cum Laude), with Best Dissertation and the “Holy Quaternity” of any BSc Economics (Microeconomics, Game Theory, Macroeconomics and Econometrics) with the highest grades available in each of these courses.

During these years, I have not only sat in a number of Econometrics courses than is equal to the number of planets in the Solar System (8), but I have also worked as a Research Associate, which means that, for 6 months, I spent most of my time working with data to answer important and interesting questions in Economics. Last but not least, my work has been and is being supervised by future winners of the Nobel Prize in Economics.

The Why=The What+The Who

The Why is, then, really quite simple: I have already met what you are about to meet and, probably most importantly from your standpoint, I have already had to share what I have learnt. I have supervised projects and dissertations of friends of mine that have gone on to either win Departmental Prizes for Best Dissertation or close to that (something I am still extremely proud of), I have addressed countless questions from friends of mine throughout the years. I have, hence, tried to put together the course in a way to address all most common problems that I have seen my friends have. You get to see the answers and the recommendations I have given to my friends that have allowed them to improve drastically their understanding of the subject. If anything, this course was born out of the simple realisation that I was not able, at some point, to keep up with the demand for advice and supervision but I still wanted to help the people I care about. The reason why this course is on this platform stems from the simple realisation that, if my friends from the BSc and the MSc had all these questions, odds are that other students around the world also had them. And so, why not share the answers to them.

Requirements

Requirements
Introductory Statistics (up until Statistical Inference)
High School Algebra
Introductory Microeconomics and Macroeconomics welcome but, by all means, not necessary: this is a self-contained course

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