ECX5479 Empirical strategies for policy evaluation

Do small classes improve learning? Does the Cashless Welfare Card reduce drug addiction? What are the impacts of Brexit on investment in the UK? These are a few of the questions that you will be equipped to answer when completing this unit. Emphasis is placed on how to design credible evaluation strategies that allow you to provide causal estimates of the impact of a policy. Core topics cover the econometric techniques that should be known by an applied economist, including randomisation, matching, regression discontinuity design, differences-in-differences and synthetic controls. Extensions include quantile regression, mediation analysis, and analysis of distributional impacts. The unit emphasises an intuitive understanding of the validity of each approach, and the use of real data, in the computer lab, as an essential complement to lectures.