Why are children's chances of "climbing the income ladder" falling in America, and why do they vary so much from place to place across the country? How can policy changes to education, the social support system, or criminal justice create more opportunities for children from disadvantaged backgrounds? How can data contribute to ongoing debates about climate change, health care policy and the recovery from the COVID-19 pandemic? This course will show how "big data" can be used to make progress on many of the most important social and economic problems of our time.  The course syllabus can be found here.

This course requires no prior economics or statistics training, although students must be excited to get into the data and analyze it for themselves. In this way, the course will be more like a laboratory science course in which you learn by "doing" economics rather than simply listening to lectures.  In order to support this work, the course will provide an introduction to these analytic methods, for instance randomized controlled trials (RCTs), quasi-experimental methods, and machine learning. 

This course qualifies as an upper-level (1000-level) elective for the purpose of satisfying the requirements of the Economics concentration (as well as for the “Public Policy” track within Economics), though students should note that this course cannot substitute for ECON0110 or ECON1620. This course also satisfies requirements in a number of other concentrations: 

• A “Gateway” course for the International and Public Affairs concentration

• An elective in the Science, Technology, and Society concentration

Please note that we have reserved 100 slots for upperclass students to register for the course, but we are also holding some slots for first-years, and so it may appear that there are open slots when in fact there are none.  If there are slots available once first-year students have had a chance to register for courses (on Labor Day Weekend 2025),  we will allow for unrestricted enrollment in the course; please email Olivia Friederich (course coordinator) if you have any questions, and if you would like to be on the mailing list for updates on open spaces in the course.