Updated Schedule
I will keep this page with the updated schedule for the semester. You can find these readings on Canvas.
| Week | Session | Topic | Required reading | Method | Deliverable |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1: 08/21 | 1 | Introduction to the course | |||
| 1: 08/23 | 2 | Geography of Upward Mobility in America | Chetty, Friedman, Hendren, Jones and Porter (2018)- Non-technical summary | ||
| 2: 08/28 | 3 | Intro to R and data | |||
| 2: 08/30 | 4 | Intro to Visualization, Wrangling and RMarkdown | First short report (In class) - Project 0 | ||
| 3: 09/04 | - | Labor Day – No class | |||
| 3: 09/06 | 5 | Intro to Causal Effects of Neighborhoods | Bergman, Chetty, DeLuca, Hendren, Katz and Palmer (2019) [Non-technical summary] | Experiments (RCTs) | Project 1 – Part 1 (for Friday 09/08) |
| 4: 09/11 | 6 | Characteristics of High-Mobility Areas and Correlation Analysis | Bergman, Chetty, DeLuca, Hendren, Katz and Palmer (2019) - Introduction | Quasi-experiments | |
| 4: 09/13 | 7 | Moving to Opportunity and place based policies | Cost-benefit analysis | Project 1 – Part 1 and 2 (for Friday 09/15) | |
| 5: 09/18 | 8 | Historical and International Evidence on and Drivers of Inequality and Mobility | |||
| 5: 09/20 | 9 | Higher Education and Upward Mobility | Dynarski, Libassi, Michelmore and Owen (2018) | Regression discontinuity | |
| 6: 09/25 | 10 | Causal Effects of Higher Education | |||
| 6: 09/27 | 11 | Review for midterm | Project 2 (Monday 10/02) | ||
| 7: 10/02 | 12 | Midterm | |||
| 7: 10/04 | 13 | Solution review | |||
| 8: 10/09 | 14 | Recap of R and Quarto Documents | |||
| 8: 10/11 | 15 | Primary education | Chetty, Friedman and Rockoff (2011) [Non-technical summary] | Experiments | |
| 9: 10/16 | 16 | Teachers and Charter Schools | Event study designs, competitive equilibrium | ||
| 9: 10/18 | 17 | Racial Disparities in Economic Opportunity | Bertrand, and Mullainathan (2004) | Dynamic models and steady states | |
| 10: 10/23 | 18 | Media Bias in Crime Coverage and Housing Prices | Instrumental Variables | ||
| 10: 10/25 | 19 | Improving judicial decisions | Kleinberg, Lakkaraju, Leskovec, Ludwig and Mullainathan (2017) | Machine learning, implicit bias | |
| 11: 10/30 | 20 | Immigration | Clemens (2011) | Welfare analysis | |
| 11: 10/01 | 21 | Implementing a simple machine learning model in R - Part 1 | |||
| 12: 11/06 | 22 | Implementing a simple machine learning model in R - Part 2 | Project 3 | ||
| 12: 11/08 | 23 | Implementing a simple machine learning model in R - Part 3 | |||
| 13: 11/13 | 24 | Political Economy | |||
| 13: 11/15 | - | - | |||
| 14: 11/20 | 25 | Income taxation | Diamond and Saez (2011) | Supply and demand; synthetic control | |
| 15: 11/28 | 26 | Savings and wealth | Behavioral Economics | ||
| 15: 11/30 | 27 | Review session |