Statistics for Public Policy: This is the first course in a three-course quantitative methods sequence. The sequence is designed to increase understanding of statistical analysis — both as a consumer of statistical analyses and as a producer of such analyses. This course introduces students to descriptive and inferential statistics commonly used in public policy research. The course aims to provide students with a solid foundation for analyzing data, and conveying their analyses in convincing and appropriate ways. Topics covered include: measures of central tendency and dispersion, probability and probability distributions, random variables, hypothesis testing and confidence intervals, statistical power, correlation, simple regression, and an introduction to multivariate regression. Students use Stata (a statistical software application) to develop their data analysis skills. Pre-requisites: None.

Environmental and Climate Change Economics: How much should we pay to improve air quality or to protect endangered species? Is it better to tax pollution or to have a cap-and-trade program? How concerned should we be about climate change damages that may occur 100 years from now? This course teaches how to apply economic principles to help answer these questions, and to understand the opportunities for and limits on making environmental policy locally, nationally, and globally. The course emphasizes in-class discussion, decision-memo writing, and direct interaction with policy practitioners. The main text is Kolstad’s Environmental Economics (2nd ed), which is complemented with case studies, articles, and other readings. Pre-requisites: PPOL 501 & PPOL 506 or PPOL 531 & 536, or PPOL 556.