Note: 大发彩票平台鈥檚 new Course Catalogue will replace the eCalendar. The Course Catalogue is expected to go live the week of April 22nd. When the new site is published, "mcgill.ca/study" will be redirected to the new Course Catalogue website.
Course information on this site is not reflective of offerings for the 2025鈥�2026 academic year. Some irregularities may occur as we move operations to the incoming Course Catalogue.
Economics (Arts) : With limited public resources, determining which programs, reforms, policies are beneficial, and at what cost, is crucial, and allows public policy to be driven by evidence. However, evaluating programs is made difficult by the 鈥渃ounterfactual problem鈥�: one cannot observe the outcomes or behavior of a participant, had (s)he not participated. This course will describe the standard OLS model, its limitations, and an improvement (panel data models). This course will then present the state-of-the-art empirical techniques used by economists to address the counterfactual issue (randomized experiments, instrumental variables, difference-in-differences, regression discontinuity design; and time permitting selection models and matching). For each of these approaches, we will give the basic intuition, discuss the necessary assumptions, present the strengths and weaknesses, and analyze applications drawn from the literature. Moreover, each technique will be implemented by the students in hands-on Stata sessions.
Terms: This course is not scheduled for the 2024-2025 academic year.
Instructors: There are no professors associated with this course for the 2024-2025 academic year.
