SUGGESTED COURSE OUTLINES
For an introductory, one-semester course, I like to cover most of the material in Chapters 1
through 8 and Chapters 10 through 12, as well as parts of Chapter 9 (but mostly through
examples). I do not typically cover all sections or subsections within each chapter. Under the
chapter headings listed below, I provide some comments on the material I find most relevant for
a first-semester course.
I typically do not begin with a review of basic algebra, probability, and statistics. In my
experience, this takes too long and the payoff is minimal. (Students tend to think that they are
taking another statistics course and start to drift away from the material.) Instead, when I need a
tool (such as the summation or expectations operator), I briefly review the necessary definitions
and key properties. Statistical inference is not more difficult to describe in the context of multiple
regression than in testing about mean a mean from a population, and so I briefly review the
principles of statistical inference during multiple regression analysis. Appendices A, B, and C are
fairly extensive. When I cover asymptotic properties of OLS, I provide a brief discussion of the
main definitions and limit theorems. If students need more than the brief review provided in
class, I point them to the appendices.
(Chapters 13 and 14) emphasize how these data structures can be used, in conjunction with
econometric methods, for policy evaluation. Chapter 15, which introduces the method of
instrumental variables, is also important for policy analysis. Most modern IV applications are
used to address the problems of omitted variables (unobserved heterogeneity) or measurement