In Semester 1 of 2018, I’m TA’ing Introduction to Econometrics (EMET2007/4007/6007) at The ANU. The lecturer uses the statistical software package STATA. I have therefore written version 1.0 of A Short STATA Primer which is available on on Econometrics page. In the document, I explain how to create STATA do-files, upload data and produce basic graphs and statistics. I will be adding to this document as the semester progresses.
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On the 8th of December 2016 I attended the final day of the 4th Continuing Education in Macroeconometrics workshop held at the Reserve Bank of New Zealand, in Wellington New Zealand. At approximately 3pm, a panel discussion commenced on the topic of Integrating Cutting Edge Research into the Policy Environment. I was amazed at the honesty and directness in which the three speakers; Adam Cagliarini from the Reserve Bank of Australia, Arthur Grimes from Motu Economics and Victoria University of Wellington and James Yetman from the Bank for International Settlements, approached the topic. Whilst I could go on for hours about their individual speeches, the discussion by Arthur Grimes was particularly eye opening for me as a final year graduate student. The reason wasn’t that his insights internally generated any profound ideas on the future of economic and political theory. Instead, the key slide that left a lasting impression on me, was one which raised the issue of whether current economic research and political decisions were made in accordance with the scientific method.
During this discussion he mentioned that most economics students probably couldn’t explain the scientific method; not because of lack of understanding but instead because they were never exposed to it in the first place. I can’t speak for anyone else, but for me this comment was both eye opening and slightly embarrassing.
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It was embarrassing because I fell into this category of graduate student that Arthur was talking about, and it was eye opening because in a discipline that prides itself on mathematical and scientific rigor, I began to wonder how my education could overlook such an important topic. Of course, there is no one to blame. After all, I have learned all about hypothesis testing, regression analysis, time series methods and other more complex statistical tools (e.g. Monte Carlo methods). Moreover, upon further investigation it turns out; at least to the best of my comprehension, that the scientific method is a more general framework in which statistical hypothesis testing plays a fundamental role.
In any event, I’ve put together two notes to assist those with no scientific background in understanding the language of science and the scientific method.