MSBA 6441: Causal Inference via Econometrics and Experimentation (Spring 2021)

Teaching Assistant, Carlson School of Management, University of Minnesota, 2021

Most managers lack real world experience working with data, above and beyond the basics of spreadsheet analysis. This course is intended to help you obtain skills in data analysis, with the following specific goals:

  • To familiarize you with the process of assembling and analyzing a dataset to address a business problem.
  • To introduce the notion of an “experiment” and the distinction between correlation and causation, in data.
  • To explore statistical techniques that can be used with observational data to achieve reliable causal inferences, in the absence of experiments.
  • To further increase your level of comfort working with R.

The course employs a combination of lectures, cases, and in-class exercises to introduce the course material. The course takes a hands-on approach, exposing you to simulated and real-world datasets, and equipping you with tools you can leverage immediately on the job. We will spend much of the class time performing and discussing empirical research.