Applied Statistics and Econometrics

EMEC002S6 (30 credits)
Full-time and Part-time Year 1
Autumn Term (second half) and Spring Term
Tutorial classes run during the Spring Term

Lecturer: Ron Smith

Course Aims and Objectives

On successful completion of the course, students will be able to demonstrate that they can:

• explain how measures of economic variables such as GDP, unemployment the price level and other index numbers are constructed; be aware of the limitations of economic data; and be able to calculate derived statistics from the data, e.g. ratios, growth rates etc.;
• use a spreadsheet to graph data and calculate summary statistics and be able to interpret the graphs and summary statistics;
• use simple rules of probability involving joint, marginal and conditional probabilities, expected values and variances;
• explain the basic principles of estimation and hypothesis testing;
• derive the Least Squares estimator and its properties;
• interpret simple regression output and conduct tests on coefficients;
• read and understand articles using economic data at the level of the FT or Economist;
• conduct and report on a piece of empirical research that uses simple statistical techniques.

Assessment

Examination: 70%; empirical project: 30%.

Reading

A set of detailed notes will be distributed which covers the material in the course.

There are a large number of good books on introductory statistics, but none that exactly match the structure of this course. This is because the course covers material that is taught in all three years of standard undergraduate economics courses. You can match up with the topics covered by using the index of the book you use. You must read about the current economy from, for instance, The Economist, Financial Times, etc. A basic book that covers the material in the first part of the course is M Barrow, Statistics for Economics Accounting and Business Studies, (5th edition, FT Prentice Hall 2009). There are many others. A more advanced textbook, which emphasises the econometrics that we do towards the end of the course, is M Verbeek, A Guide to Modern Econometrics, (3rd edition Wiley 2008). Again there are many others.