New resource: Intro to econometrics in R

I've added a new resource to this site - all of my section materials from ARE 212, Max Auffhammer's first-year PhD econometrics course, which build off of notes written by Dan Hammer, Patrick Baylis, and Kenny Bell.

These section notes simultaneously provide a gentle introduction to econometrics and to R. I covered very basic coding, including matrix operations and functions; partitioned regression and goodness of fit; hypothesis testing; ggplot2; generalized least squares and maximum likelihood; large sample properties of OLS; non-standard standard errors (twice!); instrumental variables; power calculations; spatial data; and replication, with a bonus intro to Monte Carlo simulation. Quite a full semester! 

It's so nice when everything is well behaved! OLS is even consistent!

I hope these will be a helpful resource to others. A warning: I made many of the materials from scratch and/or expanded existing notes, so there are almost certainly errors. Please let me know if you find any. A more important warning: These notes are rife with bad jokes. Prepare yourselves.

Finally, I owe a debt of gratitude to all of the ARE-212-ers of 2016, who braved 8 AM section (not my choice) and have already dramatically improved these materials. Thanks for being a super fun class!

An end-of-semester gift from one of my students (did I mention I had a great class?) and excellent in-joke for those in the know.

Happy Valentine's Day, economics edition

Enjoy:

From the always-excellent Saturday Morning Breakfast Cereal.

Also worth a look: #developmentvalentines, instigated last year by the twitter team at IPA; and this oldie-but-goodie. 

I see what you did there, Kickstarter

I'm not about product placement on this blog - only about fair and balanced commentary, obviously - but this opportunity was way too good to pass up. Remember when Cards Against Humanity was a Kickstarter? I didn't either. Who knew? Anyways - a crew of development practitioners has taken to Kickstarter to produce a C-A-H / Apples-to-Apples-like game they're calling JadedAid. I'm definitely going to order one. Or two. Or seventeen for all of my development-oriented friends. Maybe.

A sample hand from the game. Yes, yes, a thousand times yes.

Oh, the humanit[ies]!

Found this on a friend's blog, and decided it was too good to pass up. Happy Sunday!

Apparently it's from a campaign run by the University of Utah to get people to take humanities classes. Well played.