Welcome to the site for the Empirical Methods in Economics Reading Group (EMERG) at the University of Exeter.

This reading group is for MRes & PhD students in Economics at the University of Exeter.  If you are a MRes, PhD student, or Faculty member at the University of Exeter and would like to participate, please email us and we will add you to the mailing list.

Below you will find a schedule and links to the papers we will discuss (as well as slides after the presentation).

• 1 March, 2023: Weak Instruments.

  • "Valid t-ratio Inference for IV." Lee, David S., Justin McCrary, Marcelo J. Moreira, and Jack Porter, American Economic Review 112, no. 10 (2022): 3260-90.  Link at the AER, arxiv link.

  • "Weak Instruments in Instrumental Variables Regression: Theory and Practice." Andrews, Isaiah, James H. Stock, and Liyang Sun. Annual Review of Economics 11 (2019): 727-753. Link at ARE, SSRN link.

  • Weak IV "cheat sheet"

• 15 March, 2023: Synthetic Difference in Differences

  • "Synthetic Difference in Differences." Arkhangelsky, Dmitry., Susan Athey, David A. Hirshberg, Guido W. Imbens, Stefan Wager, American Economic Review 111, no. 12 (2021): 4088-4118. Link at the AER, arxiv link.

  • "Synthetic Difference In Differences Estimation." Clarke, Damian, Daniel Pailañir, Susan Athey, and Guido Imbens, arXiv preprint arXiv:2301.11859 (2023). arxiv link, SSRN link.

  • Synthetic DiD "cheat sheet"

• 22 March, 2023: Estimating Dynamic Discrete Choice Models

  • “Optimal Replacement of GMC Bus Engines: An Empirical Model of Harold Zurcher.” Rust, John. Econometrica, vol. 55, no. 5, 1987, pp. 999–1033. Link at JSTOR.

  • “Conditional Choice Probabilities and the Estimation of Dynamic Models.” Hotz, V. Joseph, and Robert A. Miller. The Review of Economic Studies, vol. 60, no. 3, 1993, pp. 497–529. Link at JSTOR.

  • Dynamic Discrete Choice "cheat sheet"

• 29 March, 2023: Post Double-Selection Inference & Double/Debiased Machine Learning

  • "Inference on treatment effects after selection among high-dimensional controls." Belloni, Alexandre, Victor Chernozhukov, and Christian Hansen. The Review of Economic Studies81, no. 2 (2014): 608-650. Link at REStud, arxiv link.

  • "Double/debiased machine learning for treatment and structural parameters." Chernozhukov, Victor, Denis Chetverikov, Mert Demirer, Esther Duflo, Christian Hansen, Whitney Newey, and James Robins. (2018): C1-C68. Link at EJ, arxiv link.

• 24 May, 2023: Regression Discontinuity Designs

  • "Regression discontinuity designs." Cattaneo, Matias D., and Rocio Titiunik.  Annual Review of Economics 14 (2022): 821-851. Link at ARE, github link.

  • "A practical introduction to regression discontinuity designs: Foundations, Chapter 2: The Sharp RD Design & Chapter 4: The Continuity-Based Approach to RD Analysis." Cattaneo, Matias D., Nicolás Idrobo, and Rocio Titiunik. Cambridge University Press (2019). Link at CUP, preprint link.

  •  "A practical introduction to regression discontinuity designs: Extensions, Chapter 3: The Fuzzy RD Design." Cattaneo, Matias D., Nicolás Idrobo, and Rocio Titiunik. preprint link.