Empirical Trade and Development: A Practitioner’s Guide

Graduate / Professional

Where is the research frontier on trade and development? Which empirical methods are most used at the frontier? How can they be leveraged to strengthen modeling-intensive papers? What is the role of theory and of structural estimation in this subfield? This course begins with a systematic survey of the most influential papers in trade and development in the past twenty years, characterizing them on empirical approach, role of theory, and type of contribution. In the first half of the course, students (a) revisit commonly used empirical methods (e.g., shift-share, difference-in-differences, matching, etc.), understand their strengths and limitations for questions in trade and development and practice implementing them in replication exercises; (b) critique papers in short referee reports and in-class discussions; and (c) apply learned empirical methods and theoretical insights to a novel research proposal. In the second half of the course, students focus on advancing their research proposal. We focus on content and on exposition. Progress entails (a) critiquing each other’s work, offering actionable feedback and reporting progress; (b) rewrites of their proposal (in slides and in prose), with special attention paid to placement in literature and clear communication; and (c) delivering a final presentation of their research. This is a coding-intensive, writing-intensive, critique-driven course. It is best suited for advanced Ph.D. students in either trade or development already working on independent research (e.g.,years 2-4), but all Ph.D. students are welcome. The course is especially valuable to students working on structure-intensive topics (e.g., networks, spatial, urban) who might not otherwise have practical exposure to reduced-form empirics and can learn to leverage those to strengthen their research. MW 10am-11:20am