Taking a Path Less Traveled: Mastering ‘Metrics Without a Textbook

Abstract

Causality plays a central role in economics instruction, save econometrics. There, attention switches to the restrictive classical linear regression assumptions, violations of them, and the search for the “true” model. Current textbooks encourage this pedagogy. In contrast, empirical economic research increasingly focuses on research design and determining causality. To prepare students for the labor market, undergraduate econometric instruction should focus on the “doing” of econometrics rather than econometric theory, a task that may necessitate forgoing the traditional textbook. This manuscript offers an example of a design-based course taught in the fall of 2017, which follows Angrist and Pischke’s Mastering ‘Metrics.