Econ 340: Economic Research Methods

Purpose: to help other instructors teaching the same course

CSU Instructor Open Textbook Adoption Portrait
Common Course ID:  Econ 340: Economic Research Methods

Abstract:  These open learning materials are being utilized in an Economics course for undergraduate students by Div Bhagia at California State University, Fullerton. The open materials provide supplemental information to support slides and materials that have the main course content. The main motivation to adopt an open textbook was to find updated materials that had no additional costs. Most student access the open materials from the professor’s website.

Econ 340: Economic Research Methods
Brief Description of course highlights:  Basics of applied economic research. How to access existing economic knowledge, locate and compile economic data, and analyze economic problems using theory and quantitative methods.

Student population: Economic Majors (core course). Prerequisites: ECON 201, ECON 202, ISDS 361A.

Learning or student outcomes:  In this course students learn:

• Conceptual and practical aspects of various statistical and econometric tools.
• To tidy, wrangle, manipulate, and visualize data using TidyVerse in R.
• How to compute descriptive statistics, perform regression analysis in R, and present results in a clear, elegant manner.
• How to effectively communicate empirical findings.

Key challenges faced and how resolved: The course material is very vast and therefore utilizes a variety of different sources. The expense of acquiring each one would quickly add up. Being able to create customized materials for the class has greatly benefited the students.

Syllabus or Sample assignments: All course material is available here: https://divbhagia.github.io/Econ340 

Textbook or OER/Low cost Title:   Class utilizes curated material in form of lecture notes and slides drawn from various sources. 

Brief Description:  The Effect is a book intended to introduce students (and non-students) to the concepts of research design and causality in the context of observational data. The book also contains code examples that can be run using the casualdata package. 

Causal Inference introduces students and practitioners to the methods necessary to arrive at meaningful answers to the questions of causation, using a range of modeling techniques and coding instructions for both the R and the Stata programming languages. Includes slides, coding labs, and interactive apps. 

Please provide a link to the resource
All the material is available on this link: https://divbhagia.github.io/Econ340

The Effect: An Introduction to Research Design and Causality by Nick Huntington-Klien   https://theeffectbook.net 

Casual Inference: The Mixtape by Scott Cunningham  https://mixtape.scunning.com/#welcome 

Student access:  All materials, including links to OER texts are available at the instructor’s website https://divbhagia.github.io/Econ340  

Provide the cost savings from that of a traditional textbook.
Other sections of ECON 340 use Practical Econometrics by Hilmer and Hilmer, which costs students $125.44 (new) on Amazon.

License: Both books are copyrighted, but the ebook versions are freely accessible online with permission from the publishers.  

OER/Low Cost Adoption Process

Provide an explanation or what motivated you to use this textbook or OER/Low Cost option. FI firmly believe that minimizing the cost of required materials is vital for creating an inclusive classroom. Moreover, the students will benefit immensely from the material specially curated towards this class's learning goals.

How did you find and select the open textbook for this course? Web Searches

Sharing Best Practices: The sustainability of open education relies on sharing with others. Please give suggestions for faculty who are just getting started with OER or Low Cost options. List anything you wish that you had known earlier.

Describe any key challenges you experienced, how they were resolved  and lessons learned. For example: incomplete OER/Low Cost materials, lack of printing facilities, bookstore confusion, academic senate support, missing ancillary materials, articulation, other?

Instructor Name:  Div Bhagia
I am an Assistant Professor of Economics at the College of Business and Economics at California State University, Fullerton. My research interests include labor economics, applied econometrics and economic geography.

Please provide a link to your university page.
https://business.fullerton.edu/academics/economics

Please describe the courses you teach
ECON 340 - Economic Research Methods: Basics of applied economic research. How to access existing economic knowledge, locate and compile economic data, and analyze economic problems using theory and quantitative methods.

ECON 441 - Introduction to Mathematical Economics: Economic theory from microeconomics and macroeconomics. Content varies; constrained optimization problems and rational decision-making.

Describe your teaching philosophy and any research interests related to your discipline or teaching.  My teaching philosophy centers on fostering student engagement, cultivating critical thinking, and equipping students with skills that will serve them throughout their lives. These principles inform my approach to the two courses I currently teach: Econ 340: Economic Research Methods and Econ 441: Mathematical Methods for Economics. 

My research spans the fields of labor economics, applied econometrics, and regional economics, with a special focus on policy-relevant issues. I am also interested in determinants of inter- group inequality and economic mobility.