Chapter 1 About

These notes have been compiled from the notes I use in my Introduction to Econometrics, Econometrics II, and Data Anaytics class. In many cases, these notes mirror the powerpoint slides avaiable on blackboard. At times, I will add additional details in the text and provide more examples.

1.1 Usage

This text should not be seen as a replacement for the required textbook. The required textbook provides many more examples and descriptions than is currently available in these notes. Additionally, many of the quizzes are based on the required textbook for the course.

1.2 Required Software and packages

I will assume you are using R version 4.4 and Rstudio. You will also need RTools44.

If you have not installed R, Rstudio, or Rtools then use the links below.

Please be sure to install these programs in the order provided above.

Once your installation is complete, copy and past the code below into the R console. This code will install many of the packages that we will use throughout the course.

list.of.packages <- c("tidyverse","stargazer", "rmarkdown", "modelsummary", "knitr", "AER", "fixest","Ecdat","mlogit","nnet","sandwitch","lmtest","estimatr","MatchIt","RItools","mfx","MASS","oglmx","pglm","plm","censReg","truncreg","sampleSelection","survival","rdd","rddtools","pscl","readstata13","texreg","kableExtra","broom","haven","rlang","clubSandwich","lfe","cobalt","tseries")
new.packages <- list.of.packages[!(list.of.packages %in% installed.packages()[,"Package"])]
if(length(new.packages)) install.packages(new.packages)

1.3 Alternative Books I would highly recommend

There are several free text you can use for this class. These resources will help you with code. The first one gives you code across multiple platforms.

For theory, I would recommend the following books

Free options

Pay options

  • Mastering ’Metrics: The Path from Cause to Effect by Joshua Angrist and Jörn-Steffen Pischke (easy to read and very little math)
  • Real Econometrics: The Right Tools to Answer Important Questions 2nd Edition by Michael Bailey

For advanced theory

  • Mostly Harmless Econometrics by Joshua Angrist and Jörn-Steffen Pischke
  • Introductory Econometrics by Jeffrey M. Wooldridge

1.4 An introduction to R

If you have no experience at all with R and would like a bootcamp, then use my 5 day bootcamp option.