Mostly harmless econometrics

What Hacker News says

1. daxat_staglatzDec 2018
   I actually was part of the CORE team. It's nice to see people actually reading it!

   In my (biased) opinion, it is a very good introduction to the _economy_, though it is perhaps too light on _economics_ [0]. That is to say, it is much, much better than other introduction-to-economics textbook at presenting the relevant facts about the economy but is a bit light on analytical tools. If one wants to go beyond this textbook, they would have to learn them. If I were to offer a comparison, CORE econ is to traditional econ textbook what a natural history of the universe book might be to a physics textbook: many more topics covered including those that would not be addressed in an intro textbook but less studying of models.

   Hopefully, if it catches on, we will hear fewer people arguing "Well, it is just basic economics that X" where X is something that it true in the toy model of econ 101 that is useful for learning but not really in real life.

   I would suggest completing this book with some econometrics - since it is those tools that allow us to (try to) see which theories may be right and which may be wrong. The books by Pischke & Angrist are good: "Mastering Metrics", and at a higher level, "Mostly Harmless Econometrics".

   The Journal of Economic Perspectives [1] is a great resource to learn more about a topic in economics. As it says: > The Journal of Economic Perspectives (JEP) fills the gap between the general interest press and academic economics journals.

   The HN crowd would also most likely like the Quantitive Economics lectures [2] from Sargent & Stachurski.

   [0] It is also a low density textbook, which seems to be common in American textbook

   [1] https://www.aeaweb.org/journals/jep

   [2] https://lectures.quantecon.org/

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2. meanmrmustard92Oct 2018
   In econometrics / empirical social science:

   - Mostly Harmless Econometrics by Joshua Angrist and Jorn Steffan Piscke

   - Causal Inference for Statistics, Social, and Biomedical Sciences by Guido Imbens and Donald Rubin

   - Data Analysis using Regression and Multilevel Models by Andrew Gelman and Jennifer Hill

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3. tomrodSep 2016
   Economist here.

   I disagree that if someone wants a broad introduction that by picking up Samuelson or MWG will be able to figure out the field from first (mathematical) principles.

   New Ideas from Dead Economists is a fantastic, broad introduction into the philosophy of economics that you appears interested in.

   Works by Keynes, Smith, Marx, Robinson, Hayek, and Ricardo do a fantastic job laying the groundwork for modern economic theory.

   If you're looking for the quantitative side of economics, Mostly Harmless Econometrics, Freakonomics, and (on the very theoretical side) Recursive Methods in Economic Dynamics are must reads.

   Capital by Picketty is currently being debated, as the underlying evidence towards his theories are compelling but not necessarily testable.

   Game theory is also a fun field within economics, and has overlap in CS and (occasionally) statistics.

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4. oli5679Sep 2016
   I'd recommend textbooks or corsera rather than pop econ books.

   Mostly Harmless Econometrics - Angrist and Krueger

   Principles of microeconomics - Mankiw (beginner)

   Intermediate microeconomics - Varian (intermediate)

   You also want to cover finance and time series - I don't know what would be good there.

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5. anacletoSep 2016
   +1 Mostly Harmless Econometrics - Angrist and Krueger
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6. huitzitziltzinJan 2022
   First thing: all claims to have proved a causal relationship are relative to a set of assumptions which may or may not be satisfied (even in experimental sciences).

   Taking the experiment as an ideal we cannot reach, there are many settings where there is useful variation in the data which can approximate the random assignment to treatment which is the essence of experiments.

   Some canonical research designs which can be used here include differences in differences, regression discontinuity, synthetic control methods, or instrumental variables methods. They are differently appropriate to different settings but permit causal claims to be made. These methods are widely used in contemporary empirical economics (indeed this is a nearly exhaustive list of methods used in applied micro!).

   Useful, accessible references here include Angrist and Pischke, “mostly harmless econométrics,” or “causal inference the mixtape” by a guy at Baylor whose name I’m forgetting, and the very recent “the effect” by Huntington-Klein, which I have not yet read.

   Other slightly more exotic models are used in (for example) industrial organization which still permit causal claims to be made about the effects of increasing prices or changing product features on demand for a product or set of products.

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