Format: Because of COVD-19, all our meetings will be held online, using Zoom. You do not need a paid Zoom account to participate in the meetings, but you will need to download and install the software (which you should do well in advance of our first meeting). Zoom meeting invitations have been sent to you. Please be patient while we get the technology to work -- I hardly expect that everything will work perfectly from the very beginning!
Because of the difficulties involved with having you present your work to me online, the format of our meetings will change from smaller group tutorials to larger classes followed by office hours. In particular, on each of Monday and Tuesday I will be combining the tutorial groups that would have met separately into a single class. These classes will meet for about 2 hours, during which time I will review the solutions to the problems, and have an open discussion of the less technical questions. In lieu of writing on a whiteboard, I will write on a piece of paper under a document visualiser (i.e. a webcam on an adjustable stand). I will then be available for consultation for up to two hours following each class.
Scheduling: The two classes will be held at the following times (BST):
Mon, 14:00--16:00: Luke, Elliot, Jane, Sebastian, Stefan, Paul
Tue, 14:00--16:00: Brendan, Kristine, Chloe, Harry, Smaranda-Ioana
I will then be available online for consultation until 18:00, depending on demand, for those of you who want to discuss any aspects of the course material further.
My video and all participants' audio for these classes will be recorded (your video will not be). This will be made accessible to you (almost immediately) and all other students taking QE (with a week's lag), to accommodate students who cannot participate in their own tutorials, for whatever reason. Participation in these classes implies that you consent to such a recording being made.
Problems: Each week I shall assign you problems from the tutorial worksheets posted on the course weblearn page. These must be submitted to me, electronically, by 15:00 (BST) on Sunday, by uploading your work to a shared Dropbox folder (that I will send each of you an invitation to). Please upload this as a single pdf, with the filename lastname_tutorial#.pdf. The university's recommendation is to use Microsoft Office Lens for creating scans of written work, and my colleague Kevin Sheppard has provided detailed instructions on how to do this most effectively.
Only work handed in for tutorials on even-numbered weeks will be graded, but in odd-numbered weeks I will also check your work to monitor your progress with the course material.
Readings: The assigned readings from Introduction to Econometrics (Stock and Watson) remain an important part of this course. It is freely available online via VitalSource until 30 June: see the QE weblearn page for details on how to access it. Though readings will still be assigned from Mastering Metrics (Angrist and Pischke), this is of less importance; you may reasonably wait until the end of the term before consulting this work.
Readings: S&W, Ch 1, Ch 2.1--2.4
Problems: those indicated at the top of worksheet 1
Readings: S&W, Ch 2.5--2.6, Ch 3
Problems: those indicated at the top of worksheet 2
Readings: as indicated in the lecture slides
Problems: those indicated at the top of worksheet 3
Readings: as indicated in the lecture slides
Problems: those indicated at the top of worksheet 4
Readings: as indicated in the lecture slides
Problems: those indicated at the top of worksheet 5
Readings: as indicated in the lecture slides
Problems: those indicated at the top of worksheet 6
Readings: S&W Ch 14 [15 in 4th / online ed.] and 16.4 [17.4 in 4th ed.] are essential, 16.1--16.3 are recommended
Problems: questions 1, 2, 3 in worksheet 7
Readings: S&W Ch 15 [16 in 4th / online ed.]
Problems: question 4 in worksheet 7; questions 1 and 3 in worksheet 8. In answering Q3 of Worksheet 8, you may find it helpful to use the data on COVID-19 cases assembled here. In case you want to use UK data, I have extracted that into a csv file.
Scheduled for Friday 9:00--11:00 in Week 8 of Hilary and Wednesday 9:00--11:00 in Weeks 1--3 of Trinity, to be held online via Zoom (link to be supplied by email).
Our first session will review the 2020 collection paper. The subsequent three sessions will review exam questions from previous years, drawn from the list below, in the order in which they appear below. (Since we can only cover 4-5 questions in a session, some of these will be skipped over.)
Probability and statistics (HT8--TT1): 2019q4; 2018q4; 2017q4
Regression (TT2--TT3): 2018q5; 2018q6; 2017q5
Instrumental variables (TT4--TT5): 2019q5; 2019q6; 2019q7; 2017q7; 2015q4; 2015q5
Time series (TT6--TT7): 2019q8; 2019q9; 2018q8; 2015q6; 2016q9 (corrected)