Dr Joana Naritomi, Dr Sandra Sequeira and Dr Diana Weinhold

This course is compulsory on the MSc in Economic Policy for International Development. This course is not available as an outside option.

Students must have completed Foundations of Applied Econometrics for Economic Development Policy (DV494).

DV495 will build on DV494 to teach students how to develop a quantitative research project in development economics. It will cover micro-econometrics, causal analysis, data visualization and research design. The course will include workshops to teach programming languages commonly used in econometrics. The objective is to enable students (a) to critically assess the quality and validity of development economics research; including analyses they will read in their courses and for their dissertation; and (b) to independently design their own research proposal.  Students will learn about the challenges of research design, including how to generate a research question, how to select a research method, and the relative strengths and weaknesses of alternative research methods. Students will then apply these skills to prepare for, and write, an original dissertation.

20 hours of lectures, 10 hours of seminars and 10 hours of computer workshops in the WT.

Students will be expected to produce 1 draft of the empirical paper in the WT and the final empirical paper in August 2024.

The course will have the following formative assessments:

- Research proposal draft and in-class presentation: each student will perform at least two in-class presentation during seminar meetings in order to get peer feedback and oral feedback from the course convenors. The presentations will take place at the beginning and at the end of WT.

- Problem sets with STATA: there will be weekly problem sets with STATA which will be supplemented with the empirical analysis that the students are conducting for their empirical paper.

These two formative assessments will provide them with skills and feedback to write their research proposals and pursue their research paper projects. They will also be relevant data for course convenors to assess which areas may need strengthening.

• Angrist, Joshua D., and Jörn-Steffen Pischke. Mastering Metrics: The Path from Cause to Effect. Princeton University Press, 2014.
• Angrist, Joshua D., and Jörn-Steffen Pischke. Mostly harmless econometrics: An empiricist's companion. Princeton university press, 2008.
• Asiedu, Edward, et al. A Call for Structured Ethics Appendices in Social Science Papers. No. w28393. National Bureau of Economic Research, 2021.
• Cunningham, Scott. Causal inference: The mixtape. Yale University Press, 2021.
• Duflo, Esther, Rachel Glennerster, and Michael Kremer. 2008. “Using Randomization in Development Economics Research: A Toolkit.” Vol. 4.
• T. Schultz and John Strauss, eds., Handbook of Development Economics. Amsterdam and New York: North Holland, 4

Research paper (70%) in August.
Research proposal (30%) in the WT.