Understanding quantitative papers - lecture byProf Ianole

RESEARCH SEMINAR

UNDERSTANDING QUANTITATIVE PAPERS – A SHORT INTRODUCTION SOCIAL SCIENTISTS THAT DO NOT WANT TO BE AFRAID OF QUANTITATIVE RESEARCH

Dr. Rodica Ianole, University of Bucharest
University of Tallinn, Narva mnt 25-29 Astra building, room A-346 at 14-16h
10th of March 2016

The purpose of the seminar is to explore the use of some specific quantitative tools with the potential to effectively identify evidence regarding cause-and-effect relationships.

The focus will be on one of the promising approaches for indicating the causal paths by which impacts are expected to occur: instrumental variables analysis, a method of estimating the effects of intervening variables on a final outcome of interest (addressing some of the most common critiques: omitted variable bias, measurement errors, reverse causality etc.)

The theory will be embedded in the discussion of a set of selected papers dealing with random assignment designs and other empirical investigations in the area of education, political economy and corruption. We will review the type of policy questions that can be answered using this method, outline the conditions that have to be met for the effects of mediating variables to be estimated and carefully examine the relevance of the numerical results.

Dr. Rodica Ianole is Assistant Professor at the Faculty of Business and Administration, University of Bucharest, Romania. She holds a PhD in Behavioral Economics, a master degree in Economic Cybernetics and Quantitative Economics and a bachelor degree in Business Administration. She currently serves as an Editor-in-Chief of the International Journal of Applied Behavioral Economics, published by IGI Global, US.