8280 - QUANTITATIVE APPROACHES AND POLICY ANALYSIS

The main purpose of the course is to allow students to interpret empirical evidence in a correct fashion as well as to become more effective users of quantitative evidence and research in the analysis of populations targeted by policy, in the analysis of policy problems and in the evaluation of policies. The primary emphasis of the course is on social policies. The course has an interdisciplinary perspective, with quantitative components and public policy analysis components.
The program of the course focuses on techniques of policy-oriented data analysis based on appropriate statistical methods on the one side, and by experimenting on real data analyses with the constant use of the package Stata in the computer lab on the other side.
Finally, the course illustrates the preparation of research and evidence based policy memos.
We assume a knowledge of statistics at the level of an undergraduate course.

• Policy analysis and data collection: where does the information for decision-making come from? Formulating policy recommendations: between politics and policies
• Macro-level analyses: OECD and beyond (including actual analyses of policy-relevant macro-data)
• Micro-level analyses: from survey design to the analysis of survey data (including actual analyses of policy-relevant micro-data
• The choice of performance targets and the preparation of evidence-based policy memos
• An introduction to program evaluation

• 30% Assignments
• 40% Written final exam
• 30% Policy memo (to be handed in at the beginning of the written exam or electronically)

• S. RABE-HESKETH, B. EVERITT, A Handbook of Statistical Analyses Using Stata, Chapman & Hall/CRC, 2004, 3^rd ed.  (selected chapters)
• Other references are provided in the detailed syllabus.