Prof. Jörg Claussen, Tim Meyer, Ph.D., Alexey Rusakov

Course Overview

Quantitative research, i.e. research that uses statistical methods to analyses large datasets, is one of the three pillars of modern science. Similarly, most decisions by firms are nowadays based on information from large datasets gathered and analyzed either internally by a firm or externally by a contracted agency. However, just analyzing data is insufficient in both academia and industry. The second important task for researchers and practitioners is to build a clear and convincing argument why their analysis is important and interesting. This seminar aims at teaching you both skills, analyzing data and theoretical reasoning. These skills are fundamental for writing a final theses and career building. The seminar will provide an overview on structuring theoretical arguments and different quantitative methods, before students apply both to examples in the different sessions. Finally, students will use their acquired knowledge and skills to develop their seminar papers using datasets from the institute and the statistical software STATA.

Course Structure

The seminar will begin with a kickoff session, where the lecturers will introduce students to research, explain theoretical reasoning and recap some empirical methods. This is followed by four 1.5 hour introductory sessions to the statistical software STATA. After six weeks, students will present their preliminary results and afterwards write up their results in a seminar paper. Students will meet regularly with a supervisor over the course of the semester.