Note: Course Websites are available to registered students at: www.canvas.ubc.ca
Economics 550 - Public Economics (Expenditures)
ECON 550 is a graduate course in public economics with a focus on the design of social
programs. The Topics include: local public goods, health care, poverty relief, and disability and
unemployment insurance. These issues will be explored from both a theoretical and an empirical
perspective. Prerequisites: ECON 500, 502, 526 & 527.
Economics 562 - Research Design and Policy Evaluation in Economics
Econ 562 will cover modern methods of causal inference with a particular emphasis on the reduced form
methods used in applied microeconomic fields (e.g. labor, public, crime, health, development
economics, etc.). Topics covered may include randomized controlled trials, differencing methods,
instrumental variables, regression discontinuity, covariate selection methods (e.g. Lasso), treatment
effects, and random forests. The emphasis of the course will be on the identifying assumptions and
appropriate application of these methods.