Mini-course
Modern perspective on Difference in Differences design
by Prof. Kirill Borusyak (UC Berkeley)

The LACEA Impact Evaluation Network (IEN) and the Department of Economics at ITAM held the mini-course "Modern perspective on Difference in Differences designs" taught by Professor Kiril Borusyak. The mini-course was free and open to the academic community in the region (researchers, policymakers, and advanced students) interested in Impact Evaluation methods.

Professor Kirill Borusyak is the Edwin C. Voorhees Endowed Assistant Professor at the University of California, Berkeley, in the Agricultural and Resource Economics department, with an additional affiliation in the Economics department. He is an Associate Editor at the Journal of the European Economic Association and is affiliated with several leading research institutions, including the NBER’s International Trade and Investment (ITI) program, CEPR, CeMMAP, CReAM, IFS, UCL’s Stone Centre for Inequality, and the CEP Trade Programme. His research focuses on international trade and applied econometrics. Professor Borusyak earned his Ph.D. from Harvard University in 2018, followed by a postdoctoral year at Princeton’s International Economics Section, and previously held a position at University College London. 

Location and registration

The course was held in person at the School of Economics at ITAM.

Course description

The course will cover the modern perspective on DiD designs. Key topics include:

• Biases of conventional specifications: what two-way fixed effects and event study regressions get wrong in staggered adoption designs with heterogeneous causal effects, and why

• Modern estimators: recent approaches to DiD estimation that are robust to heterogeneous effects

• Diagnostic tools: testing parallel trends and measuring the sensitivity of estimators to parallel trend violations

• Practically relevant extensions: triple-difference designs, repeated cross-sections, including covariates, nonlinear models, interactive fixed effects, etc.

In addition to these key topics, the course features:

• Case studies: 3 short presentations of participants' ongoing projects using diff-in-diff, with some nonstandard components, followed by feedback and discussion. We need VOLUNTEERS to apply using the registration form.

• Hands-on lab session in which attendees will apply new DiD tools to example data under the instructor’s guidance (participants are encouraged to bring laptops for the lab).

Agenda

DAY 1 - 26 September 

2:45 -3 pm Registration

3 - 3:10 pm Welcome and introduction of Prof. Kirill Borusyak

3:15 - 4:30 pm Session 1

4:30 - 4:45 pm Coffee Break

4:45 - 6 pm Session 2

DAY 2 - 27 September 

9-10:15 am Session 3

10:15 - 10:30 am Coffee Break

10:30 - 11:30 am Case studies

11:30 - 11:45 am Coffee Break

11:45 - 1 pm Lab session (bring laptops)