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Department of Economics

EC348: Research in Policy Evaluation

  • Subhasish Dey

    Module Leader

  • Bhaskar Chakravorty

    Module Lecturer

Total students will not give an accurate representation of student numbers until module registration is complete

62total
students
20total
lecture hours
20total
contact hours
15 CATS - Department of Economics
Summer Module
Autumn Module

Principal Aims

This is a research-led module and will give students an insight into how economists evaluate policy implementation. The module begins with a review of the evaluation problem and discusses methods that are used to evaluate the outcomes of various interventions. The substantive portion of the module will take a series of recent research papers which are evaluating a policy that has been implemented and explain how the authors used appropriate statistical techniques in order evaluate the policy.

Principal Learning Outcomes

Understand published empirical papers focused on policy evaluation.

Demonstrate the ability to appreciate and implement empirical research using suitable techniques.

Have developed the skills needed to understand, conduct and present empirical research related to policy evaluation.

Syllabus

Week 1 (2 hours Lecture)

Topic: Introduction to the evaluation problem.

Objective: This session will discuss the need for monitoring and evaluation, key concepts of monitoring and evaluation (causality, identification problems, selection on observable and unobservable characteristics), various elements that comprise a sound impact evaluation, data collection strategies, difficulties and limitations.

Week 2-10 (18 hours total)

Topic: Identifying the impact of an intervention

Objective: Within these eight weeks the lectures will take recent policy evaluation research papers and discuss the approach the papers took in order to evaluate the impact of the policy intervention and discuss the relative merits of alternative approaches. The approaches used for policy evaluation will include instrumental variables, differences-in-differences, matching methods, regression discontinuity design, synthetic control methods and randomized control trials, endogenous switching regression models, heterogeneous treatment effect models, Quantile Treatment Effect and event studies.

Students will also be taught to how to implement some of these procedures within appropriate statistical packages, such as STATA.

Context

Optional Module
R1L4 - Year 4, R2L4 - Year 4, R3L4 - Year 4, R4L1 - Year 4, GL11 - Year 3, GL12 - Year 4, V7MM - Year 4, V7MR - Year 3, V7ML - Year 3, V7MP - Year 3, V7MQ - Year 4, V7MS - Year 4, L1CA - Year 3, L1CC - Year 3, L1CE - Year 3, - Year 3, L1CB - Year 4, L1CG - Year 4, L1CH - Year 4
Pre or Co-requisites
Modules: EC203-30 or EC226-30
Restrictions
May not be combined with modules PO22Q-15

Assessment

Assessment Method
Coursework (40%) + Summer Exam (60%)
Coursework Details
Assessment 1: Reproducing results (20%) , Assessment 2: Policy Evaluation Report (20%) , Summer Exam (60%)
Exam Timing
N/A

Exam Rubric

Time Allowed: 2 hours

There are TWO sections in this paper. Answer FOUR questions in Section A (10 marks each) and THREE questions in Section B (20 marks).

Approved pocket calculators are allowed.

You should not submit answers to more than the required number of questions. If you do, we will mark the questions in the order that they appear, up to the required number of questions in each section.

Previous exam papers can be found in the University’s past papers archive. Please note that previous exam papers may not have operated under the same exam rubric or assessment weightings as those for the current academic year. The content of past papers may also be different.