It’s nearly impossible to overstate the value that economists ascribe to cleverness. Like most obsessions, this one is not altogether healthy.
My general philosophy in life is never to rely on being clever; instead I want to rely on being thorough and having a justifiable workflow.
This is the course website for Core Empirical Research Methods (core ERM), a 1st-year MPhil course in the Economics Department at the University of Oxford. Core ERM will help you develop the basic skills you’ll need to carry out applied economic research. It will cover a mix of applied econometrics, programming/computing, and research skills. The prerequisites are basic familiarity with programming in some language, not necessarily R, and an introductory course in econometrics at the masters level. If you are interested in auditing this course see Auditing Core ERM below.
Because Core ERM is about doing economics, it will not be a traditional lecture course. Students should bring their laptops to lectures so that they can follow along with live demos and work on examples in small groups. While there will still be some lecture-style material, the overall format will be closer to a “lab” in the natural sciences. As such attendance is mandatory if you are taking this course for credit. GTAs (Graduate Teaching Assistants) will attend each lecture to help give you individualized help if you get stuck while working through in-class exercises. See Required Software for details on how to configure your machine for core ERM.
Lecturer: Francis J. DiTraglia
Teaching Assistants
All class meetings will take place in the Manor Road Building (MRB)
Weeks 1-8 of Trinity Term, MRB Lecture Theatre. Lecture attendance is required if you are taking this course for credit.
Weeks 2-9 of Trinity Term in MRB Seminar Room D. (For the North Americans among us, these are GTA office hours.)
In this course we will use the R programming language via a front-end called RStudio. Both are freely available on all major platforms. To install them follow these instructions. To smooth out the inevitable start-of-term kinks, during week 1 we will work with RStudio via Posit Cloud. Please sign up for a free account here. This will allow you to get right to work at the start of term even if you encounter problems installing R. Eventually you will need to get R and RStudio working on your own machine, however. The week 2 drop-in surgery is an excellent place to get help with installation issues.
This course is pass/fail and will be assessed entirely on the basis of a single coursework assignment: there is no exam. Before we go any further: yes it is possible to fail core ERM. See Re-sits along with Marking Criteria for more details.
Your final assignment will be released in Week 8 and will be due at noon on Wednesday, June 19th, 2024 (TT Week 9) and must submitted via Inspera. Notice that this is a very quick turnaround. This is because your final assignment will be closely related to the weekly Problem Sets. Indeed, some questions on the final assignment may be lifted verbatim, so it behooves you to solve them every week and get help from the GTAs at their drop-in surgeries if you get stuck. See below for more details on Inspera submissions. I will provide further details regarding the final coursework assignment during lectures as the term progresses.
You are allowed, and indeed encouraged, to discuss course problems and assignments with your classmates and GTAs, but you are not allowed to directly copy code or results from another student. The work that you submit for assessment must be your own, even if it incorporates suggestions from your classmates and GTAs. You are likewise allowed to use large language models (LLMs) as a tool to help you learn R, find errors in code that doesn’t run correctly and so on. In other words, you are free to consult an LLM in the same way that you are free to consult your classmates and GTAs. I would be remiss, however, if I failed to sound a note of caution. ChatGPT4 is an incredibly valuable tool when used appropriately. While it is capable of generating convincing-sounding solutions to my problem set questions entirely on its own, it is as yet incapable of generating solutions that would receive a passing grade according to my Marking Criteria. Check yourself before you wreck yourself.
When I first taught this course back in 2022, I started writing a book to accompany it. This turned out to be a tall order, but I did manage to produce ten draft chapters. You can view them at https://empirical-methods.com. Based on my experiences teaching version 1.0 of core ERM, I decided to make a number of changes to the course. While much of the material in my draft book remains relevant, my lecture slides will be the final authority on the course material in the 2024 version of core ERM. I hope to rework the book before next year’s version of core ERM.
Barring a serious personal issue that affects your studies, there is no reason why you should fail core ERM. If you attend class, participate actively, solve the weekly problem sets, and get help at the drop-in surgeries as needed, you will develop all of the skills needed to complete the course assignments to the appropriate standard. If for some reason you do fail core ERM, you will be given an opportunity to complete a re-sit assignment that is due in early September. The summer re-sit assignment will be different from the original course assignments and, as it will not include any problem set questions, you may well find it more challenging. Working on a re-sit assignment is certain to spoil your summer, so take my advice and do what’s necessary to pass the first time around.
There will be a problem set for each of weeks 1–7 of TT. Since some problem set questions may appear on your course assessments, I will not circulate solutions during the term. You are allowed, and indeed encouraged, to discuss the problem sets with your classmates, but you are not allowed to directly copy code or results from another student on course assignments.
Assignments in Core ERM will be graded pass/fail based on five criteria. Criteria 1–3 are all-or-nothing and necessary to pass. Criteria 4 and 5 allow for partial marks.
These will be posted soon.
Between 80 and 90 students take Core ERM for credit each year, but the MRB lecture theatre seats 120. Provided that there’s space left in the room, any member of the university is most welcome to attend my lectures without asking for permission in advance. I ask only that you respect the following guidelines. First, please sit in the back row if you’re auditing so that I can more easily gauge attendance etc. Second, the Drop-In Surgeries are only for students who are taking the course for credit. Third, Core ERM lectures are fairly interactive: I and the GTAs will circulate to help students who encounter difficulties while working on the exercises. I won’t go so far as to say that we won’t help you if you’re auditing, but we will need to prioritize the students who are taking the course for credit.