ECO5434 Analysis of Economic Data (MS in Applied Economics Program)
Table of Contents
Course Description
This course is restricted to students in the MS in Applied Economics program. The course provides a basic introduction to modern data analysis methods. We will use R Studio and R Markdown to produce several projects that embed the R code for data collection, data analysis, generation and interpretation of results into a single, reproducible report in HTML and PDF formats that may be updated with a single file execution step. Our primary focus will be on short-term forecasts of economic variables. Topics include: data collection and formatting into a “tidy” data frame (an updated version of SQL); forecasting methods; forecast ensembles and averaging; time-series methods such as ARIMA, VAR and VECM; and nowcasting using large data sets with mixed frequencies, different beginning and ending dates, and missing data.
Learning Objectives
By the end of this course you will:
- be familiar with the essential techniques in economic data analysis and forecasting;
- know how to specify a model that is consistent with economic theory;
- be able to choose an appropriate statistical method to estimate the model;
- interpret your estimation and forecast results;
- prepare a brief technical report using R Markdown that can be easily updated and understood by a non-specialist.