Ateneo - UPO

The course teaches the students how to apply statistical models to
analyze economic phenomena and to evaluate the impact of public
policies and public interventions. The course is taught through an ample
use of case studies and examples in order to make the technical topics
well understandable to the students.
Case studies and empirical applications involve the use of the statistical
software “STATA”.

Booklets prepared by the instructor and downloadable from the DIR web
site (additional study material will be also available in English)

By the end of the course the students should be able to implement
statistical models to analyze economic phenomena and to perform
counterfactual impact evaluations of public policies

In order to best understand the topics of the course it is advisable (but
not mandatory) to have previously passed a course on inferential
statistics

In class lectures with powepoint slides and lectures in a PC lab focused on
the use of statistical software packages (STATA).

All the course material and information can be downloaded from the DIR
section of the DIGSPES web site

Written test that requires the students to solve problems and/or case
studies

Part I

This part aims at teaching students how to develop the appropriate
statistical models for analyzing economic phenomena, based on the
various types of available data.
List of topics:
1. How to use multiple regression models to produce empirical evidence
needed for public policy analysis;
2. Analysis of economic panel data: fixed effects estimators, first and long
differencing;
3. Selection and omitted variable bias
4. Non-parametric estimators, diffference in difference techiniques;
5. Shift share analysis;
6. Evaluation designs with non-esperimental data;
7. Multiple regression analysis with qualitative information (binary
dependent variables): probit and logit models

Part II

Estimation of the models of part I through the software STATA

The students are expected to be able to understand and apply the main
statistical methods to produce empirical evidence on the impacts of
public policies.
The students are also expected to posses the basic skills to programme
the statistical analyses on the STATA software