Introduction to Econometrics

This course teaches basic skills in econometrics, which is the statistical analysis of economic data. The emphasis in this class is on doing! Over the course of the semester, you will learn how to (i) develop a regression model, (ii) estimate it, and (iii) interpret it. General topics that we will cover include OLS regression, prediction, dummy variables, model specification, model selection, hypothesis testing, robust standard errors, endogeneity, qualitative choice models (logit and probit), simulations, and Directed Acyclic Graphs (DAGs). You will gain much hands-on experience estimating statistical models using the programming language R, a widely used, free software environment for statistical computing. One hour each week is devoted to learning the mathematical foundation for econometrics that will equip you to go on to do further coursework in econometrics.

15 points

(1) ECON104 or ECON105; and (2) 15 points from STAT. RP: MATH101 or Year 13 Math with Calculus.

ECON214

Data Analytics for Business Economics

This course teaches basic skills in econometrics, which is the statistical analysis of economic data. The emphasis in this class is on doing! Over the course of the semester, you will learn how to (i) develop a regression model, (ii) estimate it, and (iii) interpret it. General topics that we will cover include OLS regression, prediction, dummy variables, model specification, model selection, hypothesis testing, robust standard errors, endogeneity, qualitative choice models (logit and probit), simulations, and Directed Acyclic Graphs (DAGs). You will gain much hands-on experience estimating statistical models using the programming language R, a widely used, free software environment for statistical computing. One hour each week is devoted to analysing case studies and improving presentation skills.

15 points

(1) ECON104 or ECON105; and (2) 15 points from STAT

ECON213

Economic Analysis of "Big Data"

With the decrease of the cost of storing data, both the size and the variety of available data has increased dramatically. In this course, we will discuss how such 'big data', and the 'artificial intelligence' that may result from it, is affecting both the economy itself and how the economy can be analysed. We will analyse the impact of big data and artificial intelligence on the economy through various examples of how businesses and governments can benefit from big data and artificial intelligence, but also of how big data and artificial intelligence can be abused by them. We also discuss how big data and artificial intelligence has created new ways to analyse the economy, by providing new ways to collect data (for example, web scraping) and by creating new types of data (for example, Google Trend/Correlate data, Text data and Image data) that can be used to analyse the economy.

15 points

(1) ECON105; and (2) ECON213 or ECON214