Causal Inference for Policy Evaluation (Research Project)

Course goals

Learning objectives
At the end of the course the student is able to:

• Understand the difference between correlation and causation
• Understand the identifying assumptions underlying different estimation strategies
• Compare different research designs and their relevance
• Develop strategies for identifying causal relationships
• Assess the validity of empirical studies on cause-effect relationships
• Implement causal inference methods in statistical software
• Interpret and evaluate estimation results from causal inference methods

Content

Many policies are introduced every year, but are these policies also effective? This course revolves around the question: How can we separate correlation from causation and estimate the causal impact of a policy from observational data?

This course introduces students to critical thinking about cause and effect. Its main goal is to provide an overview of the most important empirical methods (or “research designs”) for estimating causal effects of policies from observational data. In the lectures the methods are introduced theoretically, while in the tutorials students practice applying them to real-world questions.

The course is based on the idea that the task of causal inference can be split into two steps: the (conceptual) identification of causal effects, and their subsequent (statistical) estimation. The main focus of the lectures is on identification: for each research design a thorough and intuitive explanation of the underlying identification strategy and its identifying assumptions is provided. The aim is to draw the connection between classic econometric estimators students have seen in previous course(s) and causal treatment effect parameters. The focus of the tutorials is on estimation, as students will implement the research designs in R using data from real-world examples.

Format
Two weekly meetings: one (theoretical) lecture and one (practical) tutorial.

Instructional modes

• Lecture: Attendance requirement: yes.
• Tutorial: Attendance requirement: yes.

 
In case online access is required for this course and you are not in the position to buy the access code, you are advised to contact the course coordinator for an alternative solution. Please note that access codes are not re-usable meaning that codes from second hand books do not work, as well as access codes from books with a different ISBN. Separate or spare codes are usually not available.