The course aims at presenting and discussing the main approaches to the quantitative evaluation of public and private policies. 

The course will touch upon:

• Randomized experiments
• Regression discontinuity analysis
• Differences in Differences
• Synthetic control
• Wald estimator and Instrumental Variables
  

• The student will acquire an overview of the relevant methodologies in policy evaluations exercises. 
• The student will learn about different applications of the presented methodologies
• The student will acquire the capacity to critically assess the quantitative evaluations of policies
• The student will be able to optimally design a policy evaluation exercise.
  

The course applies a combination of:

• Lecture
• Readings of relevant papers
• Presentations of students' own research or relevant area-specific papers. 
  

Grading:

• Participation (20%)
• Presentation (60%)
  
• Essay (20%)