Principal Instructor

Prof. Carolina Caetano
Homepage
About prof. Caetano (office location, mailing address, etc.)
Email prof. Caetano

Graduate TAs

David Slichter
Sulagna Mookerjee
Tiago Tavares
Umair Khalil

Undergraduate TAs

Anthony Cha
Colin H. Jiang
Dan Stavins
Nicholas Leclaire
Xiaofan Cao

To find out the specialty of each TA, as well as their emails, go to the contact the TAs page.

Official pre-requisites are ECO 207 and ECO 230 (or equivalent SST 213 or MTH 203). See more details about background requirements here. See what to do if your background is insufficient here.

This course has 4 midterms, 1 final, 1 replication, 1 project, and 5 Stata homeworks. All the assignments will be carefully described in the announcements page. Here is a brief description:

Midterms

Each midterm has two questions.
Question 1 will describe a situation, and ask several questions. The questions will be given to you in advance, but the situation is a surprise.
Question 2 refers to a scientific paper. The paper and the questions will be given to you in advance.

Final

The final has two questions.
Question 1 is similar to question 1 in the midterms, however, both the situation and the questions will be a surprise (although by the end of the semester you will be able to guess what will be asked).
Question 2 is an essay. You will be given a situation, and you will describe how you would develop a research project about it. The situation will be a surprise, but you will be able to see the examples used in the previous years.

Replication

The replication assignment is a replication of the same paper we were studying in the midterms using Stata. You will download a data set, clean it, and do everything the author did, hopefully achieving similar results.

Project

The project is a 5 to 10 page essay criticizing the paper we studied in the midterms and the replication. It begins with a description, and then continues to a critique.

Stata homeworks

The Stata homeworks are short. The point is for you to practice programming using this software.

40% Midterms
25% Final
10% Replication
10% Stata homeworks
15% Project

Details:

1. We will drop the lowest grade midterm.
2. We will drop the lowest grade Stata homework.
3. This course is graded on a curve. You can read more details about how the grading is determined here.
4. After I assign the final grade, you can receive a positive mark, which is a one grade bump. Read more about the positive mark here.

09/03 No class, Labor Day
09/05 First class
09/21 Homework 1 due
09/26 Midterm 1
10/05 Homework 2 due
10/08 No class, Fall Break
10/12 Homework 3 due
10/17 Midterm 2
10/26 Homework 4 due
10/31 No class, Material Break
11/02 Homework 5 due
11/07 Midterm 3
11/16 Replication due
11/19 No class, Thanksgiving
11/21 No class, Thanksgiving
12/05 Midterm 4
12/17 Final


Pay attention to the underlined dates. You must come to class to take exams on those dates, so plan accordingly.

There are no make-up exams, and the rules on late homeworks are very strict. If for any reason you missed an assignment, remember that the lowest grade will be dropped. This is the reason we drop the lowest grade in the first place, so no complaints! When an assignment is posted, there will be an update in the announcements page with all the rules concerning that assignment.

Lectures follow the notes, which you can download in the download page. You will see that the notes have several gaps in them which you must fill in class. Hence, though lectures are not mandatory, you must make sure that you get the notes somewhere. A lot of the material in the notes cannot be found in the book, so you must take action to complete the notes if you missed class.

Stata labs are not mandatory. However, they were carefully planned so that the material and examples fit perfectly with the course, and you can't get this anywhere else. If you must miss a lab, take measures to remedy that. Computers in the Stata labs are limited. Students that are registered to a particular section have priority. If you have Stata in your laptop, you can bring it to the section.

This course uses the software Stata. This software is extremely user-friendly, and quite up-to-date with the state of the art in applied Social Sciences research. Consider learning to work with this program as one of the most valuable skills you will acquire in this course.

The university has Stata installed in all lab computers. You can also purchase an inexpensive Stata license in this link. If you decide to buy Stata, buy the IC version or better. Do not buy the "small Stata" version, because it won't be able to handle most data sets in this course.

Office hours. There are many office hours spread through all days in the week. You can see the schedule in the calendar page. You can bring all your questions to the regular office hours, but I recommend that you check the Contact the TAs page to see in what that TA specializes. After the assignments are handed back, the TAs that graded the assignment hold grading office hours. Bring your grading questions to them.

Class Plan. This page contains a very detailed plan of the entire course, including assignment due dates. I update it often to make adjustments to the plan as the course progresses, and to write comments. You can use this page to prepare for classes in advance, as a review guide, and as a detailed account of the material that will be required in the exams.

Forum. The forum is the go-to place when you have questions, especially if you need them answered soon. Before you e-mail anybody, check the forum. Somebody may have already posted the same question, and received an answer. If not, post the question there. There are TAs especially assigned to monitor the Forum, answer questions, and contact me or the other TAs when they don’t know the answer. I also check the Forum frequently, monitor most of the TA answers, and often answer questions there. You do not need to post under your name, you can create a dummy account if you feel embarrassed. If you e-mail us questions that we think will be of general interest, we will likely ask you to post if there anyway, so save everybody’s time and go there directly. Want to know how to post in the forum? Read this.

Live Help Events. These are forum office hours. During those events one of the TAs will be monitoring the forum, and answering questions as they appear. During the Live Help events your questions will be likely answered on the spot, and you don’t even have to leave your home.

E-mail. You should e-mail me or one of the TAs when your question is not of general interest. There are special rules concerning e-mails, and you can read them in the Contact us page.

If throughout the semester ANY student feels either depressed, overly anxious, desperate, hopeless, angry, or neglected, be it related to this course or not, please reach out. Write to me or come meet with me at the office hours.