EC137: Using Data for Economic Policy

Welcome!

EC137: Using Data for Economic PolicyTable of Contents Pre-class activitiesExercisesCapstone 2Capstone 3Unit 2 - R Week 7{07-01} 03/16 Introduction to R{07-02} 03/18 Introduction to dplyrWeek 8 Data visualization in R{08-01} 03/23 Introduction to ggplot2~~{08-02} 03/25 Cancelled~~Week 9 Inequality{09-01} 03/30 Fun with {ggplot2}{09-02} 04/01 Definitions of inequalityWeek 10 - Inequality{10-01} 04/06 Trends in inequality {10-02} 04/08 Neighborhoods and income mobilityWeek 11 - Inequality{11-01} 04/13 Impact of policy on inequality~~{11-02} 04/15 No class - respite day~~Week 12 - Capstone{12-01} 04/20 Project showcase{12-02} 04/22 Policy writing workshopUnit 3: Putting it all togetherWeek 13 - Higher education{13-01} 04/27 Returns to education{13-02} 04/29 In-class work day{13-02} 04/29 Overview of student debtWeek 14 - Student debt{14-01} 05/04 Impacts of student debt{14-02} 05/06 Student debt reformWeek 15 - Conclusion{15-01} 05/11 Project showcase R ReferencesEC137 ResourcesQuick R GuidesGeneral R InstructionTopics we didn't coverggplot2ArchiveData Visualization ResourcesAdvanced Resources

Pre-class activities

See all pre-class activities for the R unit here

Exercises

Exercise 03 - Due April 04 @ 11:59pm

Exercise 04 - Due April 20 @ 11:40 am

Exercise 05 - Due May 02 @ 11:59pm

Capstone 2

Project description

Specifications powerpoint pptx pdf

Deadlines

April 18 (Sun): Optional rough draft due (option B of Exercise 04)

April 20 (T): Project showcase

April 25 (Sun): Capstone 2 due

Capstone 3

Project description

May 9 (Sun): Optional rough draft due

May 11 (T): Project showcase

May 16 (Sun): Capstone 3 due

Capstone 3 Rubric

Unit 2 - R

Week 7

{07-01} 03/16 Introduction to R

Element	Activity
Pre-class	Complete 07-01 pre-class activity.
Lesson	Introduction to R
Downloads	None
Resources	RMarkdown cheat sheet

{07-02} 03/18 Introduction to `dplyr`

Element	Activity
Pre-class	Complete 07-02 pre-class activity.
Lesson	07-02 Introduction to dplyr
Downloads	PC: 07-02 template
---	In-class: 07-02 template
Resources	`dplyr` cheat sheet

Week 8 Data visualization in R

{08-01} 03/23 Introduction to ggplot2

Element	Activity
Pre-class	Complete 08-01 pre-class activity PC: 08-01 template,Rmd
Lesson	Slides
	Template: 08-01 Introduction to ggplot2.Rmd Output: 08-01 Introduction to ggplot2.html
In-class activity	In-class: 08-01 template.Rmd 08-01 template.html
Resources	`ggplot2` cheat sheet

{08-02} 03/25 Cancelled

Week 9 Inequality

Exercise 03 due at the end of the week!

{09-01} 03/30 Fun with `{ggplot2}`

Element	Activity
Pre-class	Complete 09-01 pre-class activity. Template: R_0901_pc_template.Rmd
Lesson	09-01 Fun with `{ggplot2}` Slides: LecturesSlides-09-01 Code: 09-01-lesson.Rmd
In-class activity	09-01-inclass.Rmd 09-01-inclass.html
---
Resources	`ggplot2` theme elements - amazing graphic + demonstration Data wrangling cheat sheet (`dplyr`-based)

{09-02} 04/01 Definitions of inequality

---	---
Pre-class	Read	Chapters 5.9 and 5.10, Economy, Society, and Public Policy
	Complete	Complete 09-02 pre-class activity Template: 09-02-preclass.Rmd html of template: 09-02-preclass.html
Lesson
In-class activity

Week 10 - Inequality

{10-01} 04/06 Trends in inequality

Note: If you have issues w/ article limits and access to The New York Times, please remember that you can sign up for a free digital subscription through UVM! 🎉🎉🎉 Now you can geek out w/ the NYT for free all the time. 🤓

---	---
Pre-class	Read	New York Times "Watch four decades of inequality drive American cities apart." 02 December 2019 Kent, A., Ricketts, L., and Boshara, R. "What wealth inequality in America looks like: facts and figures." 14 August 2019 Lowrey, A. "The wealth gap in America is growing too." The New York Times, 02 April 2014
	Optional	Abel, J. and Deitz, R. "Why are some places so much more unequal than others?" Federal Reserve Bank of New York Economic Policy Review, 25.1 Decmeber 2019. <-- This is the full article that informs the NYTimes piece, if you're interested! Pew Research Center "Many around the world were pessimistic about inequality even before the pandemic." 06 August 2020 The America We Need New York Times interactive feature with heaps of articles on inequality, work, and cities in light of the pandemic. It's kind of amazing. Saez, E. and Zucman, G. "Wealth Inequality in the United States since 1913" October 2014 Slides from Saez and Zucman that forom the base of the 3rd assigned article.
	Complete	Answer 10-01 reflection questions on Blackboard (300-500 words)
Lesson
In-class activity

{10-02} 04/08 Neighborhoods and income mobility

---	---
Pre-class	Read	(6p), R., Friedman, J. N., Hendren, N., Jones, M. R., and Porter, S. R. "The Opportunity Atlas: Mapping the Childhood Roots of Social Mobility" (Executive Summary) The Opportunity Atlas
	Optional	(92p) Chetty, R., Friedman, J. N., Hendren, N., Jones, M. R., and Porter, S. R. "The Opportunity Atlas: Mapping the Childhood Roots of Social Mobility." January 2020. (105p) Chetty, R., Hendren, N., Kline, P., and Saez, E. 2014 "Where is the land of opportunity? The geography of intergenerational mobility in the United States". massively long, but important paper!
	Complete	Complete 10-02 pre-class activity on Blackboard
Lesson		Lecture slides: pdf or pptx
In-class activity		10-02-inclass.Rmd 10-02-inclass.html

Week 11 - Inequality

Exercise 04 due at the end of the week!

{11-01} 04/13 Impact of policy on inequality

---	---
Pre-class	Read	(2p) Chetty, R., Hendren, N., and Katz, L. "The Effects of Exposure to Better Neighborhoods on Children" (Executive Summary). May 2015 (~10p) Collinson, R. and Ludwig, J. "Neighborhoods and Opportunity in America." The Brookings Institution. 19 September 2019.
	Optional	(90p) Chetty, Raj, Nathaniel Hendren, and Lawrence F. Katz. "The effects of exposure to better neighborhoods on children: New evidence from the Moving to Opportunity experiment." American Economic Review 106.4 (2016): 855-902. (12p) Ludwig, Jens, Greg J. Duncan, Lisa A. Gennetian, Lawrence F. Katz, Ronald C. Kessler, Jeffrey R. Kling, and Lisa Sanbonmatsu. 2013. “Long-Term Neighborhood Effects on Low-Income Families: Evidence from Moving to Opportunity.” American Economic Review 103, no. 3: 226–231. Moving to Opportunity for Fair Housing Demonstration Program: Interim Impacts Evaluation (and executive summary)
	Complete	Complete 11-01 pre-class activity on Blackboard
Lesson
In-class activity

{11-02} 04/15 No class - respite day

Week 12 - Capstone

{12-01} 04/20 Project showcase

Submit your draft slides on Blackboard before class

12-01 Class slides

{12-02} 04/22 Policy writing workshop

We'll cover the art of policy writing to gear up for the final capstone

12-02 Class slides

Details on Capstone 03

###

Unit 3: Putting it all together

Week 13 - Higher education

Exercise 05 due at the end of the week!

{13-01} 04/27 Returns to education

---	---
Pre-class	Read	(p10) Webber, Douglas. “Is the Return to Education the Same for Everybody?” IZA World of Labor, October 1, 2014. Read the "full article" version!
	Optional	Emmons, William, Kent, Ana H., and Ricketts., Lowell R.Is College Still Worth It?
	Complete	Answer reading response questions on Blackboard
Lesson
In-class activity		Major decisions: What graduates earn over their lifetimes The Hamilton Project: Earnings by College Major The Hamilton Project: Undergraduate Student Loan Payment Calculator

{13-02} 04/29 In-class work day

No pre-class activitys. In-class work day!

{13-02} 04/29 Overview of student debt

---	---
Pre-class	Read	Carey, K. "What about tackling the causes of student debt? The New York Times. 18 November 2020.
		(8p) Fry, R. "The changing profile of student borrowers." Pew Research Center. 07 Oct 2014.
		(3p) Dynarski, S. "Student Debt" The Poverty and Inequality Report 2019
	Complete	Download the data from the chart in the NYT article by clicking on the source (it's a `.csv` file, so you may need to right click --> save link as). Using R or Excel, recreate the chart but adjust it for inflation. Make it pretty
Lesson
In-class activity

Week 14 - Student debt

{14-01} 05/04 Impacts of student debt

---	---
Pre-class	Read	Black, Sandra, Amy Filipek, Jason Furman, Laura Giuliano, and Ayushi Narayan. “Student Loans and College Quality: Effects on Borrowers and the Economy.” VoxEU.Org (blog), August 4, 2016. https://voxeu.org/article/student-loans-and-college-quality-effects-borrowers-and-economy.
	Complete
	Optional readings	Elliot, W. and Nam, I. "Is student debt jeopardizing the short-term financial health of US households?" Federal Reserve Bank of St Louis Review. September/October 2013.
Lesson
In-class activity

{14-02} 05/06 Student debt reform

In-class work day!

Week 15 - Conclusion

{15-01} 05/11 Project showcase

Our lass class! 😭

---	---
Pre-class		Prepare your policy brief draft
Lesson
In-class activity

###

R References

EC137 Resources

R Troubleshooting

Quick R Guides

R cheat sheet
RStudio cheat sheet
RMarkdown cheat sheet
dplyr cheat sheet
Data wrangling cheat sheet (dplyr-based)
ggplot2 cheat sheet

General R Instruction

R for Data Science: A free online book for learning the basics of R and the tidyverse.

R and RStudio cheat sheets: A large collection of simple cheat sheets for RStudio, `ggplot2', and other R-related things.

Stat 545: Dr. Jenny Bryan at RStudio has an entire introductory course in R, visualization, and data analysis online.

STA 112FS: Data Science: Dr. Mine Çetinkaya-Rundel at the University of Edinburgh / Duke University has an entire introductory course in R, visualization, and data science online.

CSE 631: Principles & Practice of Data Visualization: Yet another introductory course for R and ggplot2 by Dr. Alison Presmanes Hill at RStudio.

COMP/STAT 112: Introductory Data Science Tutorials from a course at Macalester put together by Lisa Lendway

Openscapes: I struggle to describe what this is. But, it is wonderful.

Topics we didn't cover

See Data Wrangling 2 slides by Claus O. Wilke

Merging data sets with join_by()
Reshaping data sets with pivot_wider() and pivot_longer

See Getting things in order by Cdlaus O. Wilke

Manually ordering bars with fct_relevel()
Work the the most common observations with fct_infreq()
Reverse order with fct_rev()
Lump factors together with fct_lump_n()

Want to add linear or non-linear trendlines? We can do that. See Visualizing trends.

`ggplot2`

ggplot2tor: step-by-step tutorials to highlight specific things you can do in ggplot!

ggplot2tor: A complete guide to scales

Henry Wang: ggplot2 theme elements - amazing graphic + demonstration

Data Visualization Resources

Selecting color scales

Advanced Resources

Building a {distill} website

Make a reproducible example (reprex)