Introduction to Computer Programming

(4 Credits)

We find that the exposure of many economists to programming languages tends to be limited to mastering statistical packages, such as Stata and EViews, just well enough in order to perform simple tasks like running a basic regression. These skills, however, do not scale up in a straightforward manner to handle complex projects. This course is designed to help address this challenge. It is aimed at Masters students who expect to do research in a field that requires modest to heavy use of computations. In other words, any field that either involves real-world data; or that does not generally lead to models with simple closed-form solutions. Students will be introduced to effective programming practices that will substantially reduce their time spent programming, make their programs more dependable, and their results reproducible without extra effort. The course draws extensively on some simple techniques that are the backbone of modern software development, which most economists are simply not aware of. It shows the usefulness of these techniques for a wide variety of economic and econometric applications by means of hands-on examples.