Introduction to Econometrics

This course introduces the statistical methods used to analyze economic data. Economists often need to test the validity of competing theories and to analyze government and business policies. Econometrics provide them with the necessary tools. The course starts with an exposition of essential probability concepts. Then, students will be introduced to statistical inference, estimation and hypothesis testing. The third part of the course will be devoted to regression analysis. Theory is illustrated with examples, and emphasis will be placed on the connection between the theory and application. This practice will be reinforced by computer lectures using Stata, a computer software commonly used by economists for data analysis. This course is a prerequisite for many applied economics courses at Brown and for higher level econometrics.