Remote Policy Evaluation methods course - 24  - 26  May

The Institute for Fiscal Studies was founded in 1969. Established as an independent research institute, IFS was launched with the principal aim of better informing public debate on economics in order to promote the development of effective fiscal policy. Through the establishment of rigorous independent research, for example the IFS Green Budget and Post Budget analysis, IFS successfully opened up debate about public policy to a wider audience and influenced policy decision making.Today, IFS is Britain’s leading independent microeconomic research institute. Its research remit is one of the broadest in public policy analysis, covering subjects from tax and benefits to education policy, from labour supply to corporate taxation. Our research not only has an impact on policy makers, think tanks and practitioners, it has also gained a worldwide reputation for academic rigour, and contributes to the development of academic scholarship. We communicate our research widely on a national and international scale, providing independent advice to policy makers in the UK, Europe and in developing countries; collaborating with world renowned academics on new economic theories and techniques; and disseminating our research globally through the press, media and the web.

Institute for Fiscal Studies

Please note the dates for this course: 3 – 23 May for self-paced study, May 24 + 25 + 26 for the 3 live days.

UCL Department of Economics

How can one evaluate whether a government labour market programme such as the Work Programme, or a subsidy to education such as the EMA is actually working? This course deals with the econometric and statistical tools that have been developed to estimate the causal impact on one or more outcomes of interest of any generic ‘treatment’ – from government programmes, policies or reforms, to the returns to education, the impact of unionism on wages, or of smoking on own and children's health.
After highlighting the ‘evaluation problem’ and the challenges it poses to the analyst, we focus on the main empirical methods to solve it. Specifically, in this 3 and a half-day course we cover:
<ul>
<li>Randomised social experiments</li>
<li>Naive non-experimental estimator</li>
<li>Natural experiments or instrumental variables</li>
<li>Regression Discontinuity Design</li>
<li>Regression analysis</li>
<li>Matching methods</li>
<li>Before-after</li>
<li>Difference-in-differences</li>
<li>Synthetic control methods</li>
</ul>
 
For each of these approaches, we give the basic intuition, discuss the assumptions needed for its validity, highlight the question it answers and formally show identification of the parameter of interest. The relative strengths and weaknesses of each approach are discussed in detail, drawing from example applications in the economics literature. Each method will be implemented ‘hands-on’ in practical Stata sessions.
By the end of the course, participants will be able to:
<ul>
<li>frame a variety of microeconometric problems into the evaluation framework, and be aware of the concomitant methodological and modelling issues;</li>
<li>be discerning users of econometric output – able to interpret the results of applied work in the evaluation literature and to assess its strengths and limitations;</li>
<li>access the evaluation literature to further deepen knowledge on their own;</li>
<li>choose the appropriate evaluation method and strategy to estimate causal effects in different contexts; and</li>
<li>use simple statistical packages (we use Stata in the course) to implement the different evaluation methods to real data. </li>
</ul>

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Remote Policy Evaluation methods course - 24 - 26 May

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Remote Policy Evaluation methods course - 24 - 26 May

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