"Metrics: Illuminating the Path from Cause to Effect" featuring Josh Angrist

Friday 15th May 2015, 5pm-6pm

Lecture organised by Toru Kitagawa (UCL)

Location: Drayton Jevons LT, UCL

Sponsored by Cemmap

Josh Angrist (MIT) will deliver a special Cemmap lecture on the topics in and around "Mastering 'Metrics", his recent book co-authored with J-S. Pischke.

Come and hear Josh discuss Mastering 'Metrics, the new book by Angrist and Steve Pischke.  Applied econometrics, known to aficionados as ‘metrics, is the original data science. Mastering ‘Metrics explains and illustrates the econometric methods that economists use to untangle cause and effect in human affairs. Through accessible discussion and with a dose of kung fu-themed humor, Josh (Master Joshway) and Steve (Master Stevefu) presents the essential tools of econometric research and demonstrates why econometrics is exciting, fun, and useful.

In contrast with traditional technical presentations, Mastering 'Metrics' seasoned masters use well-crafted real-world examples to highlight the Furious Five econometric tools: random assignment, regression, instrumental variables, regression discontinuity designs, and differences in differences.  Does health insurance make you healthier? Randomized experiments provide answers. Are expensive private colleges and selective public high schools better than more pedestrian institutions? Regression analysis and a regression discontinuity design reveal the surprising truth. When private banks teeter, and depositors take their money and run, should central banks step in to save them? Differences-in-differences analysis of a Depression-era banking crisis offers a response. Could arresting O. J. Simpson have saved his ex-wife’s life? Instrumental variables methods instruct law enforcement authorities in how best to respond to domestic abuse. Wielding econometric tools with skill and confidence, Mastering 'Metrics shows how data and statistics illuminate the path from cause to effect.

Josh Angrist is Ford Professor of Economics Co-Director of the School Effectiveness and Inequality Initiative Massachusetts Institute of Technology and Research Associate and Fellow, National Bureau of Economic Research and IZA

The lecture will be followed by post-seminar refreshment in the basement lounge in Drayton House.