EC475      One Unit
Quantitative Economics

This information is for the 2025/26 session.

Course Convenor

Availability

Requisites

Co-requisites:

Students must complete EC400 or EC451 either before taking this course or in the same year as this course.

Additional requisites:

Knowledge of econometric theory and applied econometrics is expected. Students must be prepared to read journal articles with difficult mathematical and statistical content.

The course focuses on modern quantitative papers which demonstrate the application of econometric techniques to modelling the behaviour of individual economic agents (households and firms) and economies.

The first half of the course focuses on papers in the empirical literature on a wide range of topics in applied micro-econometrics including industrial organisation, labour economics, economic history, and energy/environmental economics. Papers are chosen to illustrate the challenges of identification and causal inference. The focus of the content is on methods, however the papers covered as examples of those methods use data and study economic questions from a variety of countries and settings. A goal is to provide a diverse view of economic research. The lectures will illustrate the interplay between models, data, and methods.

The second part of the course focuses on macroeconomic questions using data and tools from applied microeconomics. We cover four styles of empirical work: (1) “reduced-form” approaches (including difference-in-differences, event studies, instrumental variables, and Bartik research designs); (2) structural models; (3) “sufficient statistics” research designs, at the intersection of structural and reduced-form methods; and (4) machine learning techniques. Topics covered include the effectiveness of fiscal stimulus, the measurement of inflation, directed technical change, the welfare effects of trade, the macroeconomic impact of financial frictions over the business cycle, the macroeconomic impact of unemployment insurance, and the effect of Artificial Intelligence on the labour market.

1 hours of seminars in the Spring Term.
10 hours of seminars and 20 hours of lectures in the Winter Term.
20 hours of lectures and 9 hours of seminars in the Autumn Term.

This course has a reading week in Week 6 of Autumn and Winter Term.

During Autumn term and Winter term, students will work on their essay and receive feedback from the instructors (defining the research question, choosing a research design, etc.). In Autumn term formative assignments will move students toward creating an idea for their paper and referee reports on papers that are discussed in seminars. Formative assignments in Winter term will be presentations of research papers and providing feedback to peers.

Articles in economic journals will be assigned at the start of Autumn and Winter terms. The course will also draw on methodological topics covered in Wooldridge, Econometric Analysis of Cross Section and Panel Data (2nd edition, 2010), Greene, Econometric Analysis (7th edition, 2012), and Angrist and Pischke, Mostly Harmless Econometrics (2009).

Exam (50%), duration: 120 Minutes, reading time: 15 minutes in the Spring exam period

Essay (50%, 6000 words)

This course is IRDAP-enabled, meaning that resit and deferred assessments will take place in August 2026.