S290 – Applied Causal Inference in Education Research

Spring Semester (2017–present)

The focus of this seminar is applied econometric methods for answering causal questions. The course is organized around several common strategies in applied causal inference: experiments, difference-in-differences, event studies, regression discontinuity, instrumental variables, conditional independence arguments, etc. The primary goal of the course is to develop skills for producing academic papers with convincing causal claims. The convincingness of a causal claim depends on several inputs which will be themes of the course: statistical methods, social science theory, institutional details, logical reasoning, good writing, etc.

Enrollment is limited to Ph.D. students except by permission of instructor. Because the final project for this course requires original data analysis, students are asked to contact the instructor prior to the beginning of the spring semester to discuss the data they will use for their final project.