Empirical Research Methods for Political Science

This class is an introduction to research design and statistical methods for empirical analysis targeted to Ph.D. students in Politics and other social sciences. In the first part, the class introduces the potential outcomes framework and how to analyze randomized controlled experiments, including basic statistical tools such as populations and sampling, hypothesis tests, large-sample results, and least squares methods. In the second part, the class covers non-experimental designs, including selection on observables, instrumental variables, and regression discontinuity. Students learn the statistical software R and analyze real datasets.