Chris Blattman

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Only read this post if "development" and "econometrics" make you warm and tingly

I’ve just realized that Angus Deaton’s infamous Analysis of Household Surveys is free online from the World Bank. Budding development researchers: read this book. The first two chapters are one of the best guides to panel data analysis I’ve seen.

The abstract:

This book is about the analysis of household survey data from developing countries and about how such data can be used to cast light on a range of policy issues. Much of the analysis works with household budget data, collected from income and expenditure surveys, though it addresses topics that require wider information.

The book uses data from several different economies as diverse as Cote d’Ivoire, India, Pakistan, South Africa, Taiwan (China), and Thailand. The book concerns both methodology and substance, and one of the aims is to bring together the relevant statistical and econometric methods that are useful for building the bridge between data and policy.

The book is not intended as a manual for the analysis of survey data – but it does provide a number of illustrations of what can be done, with fairly detailed explanations of how to do it.

4 Responses

  1. A few ago, I had posted (attempted to post?) a comment here re: using university student cohorts as an tool to understand intergenerational learning processes.

    I visited this link today and don’t see my comment. Is this a problem with the webpage or did you manually remove it?

  2. Good job posting that! This made me think though – when I was doing my Master’s degree a few years ago, I received and passed on the PDF version from/to several of my peers – I can’t remember how the first student got it – probably online.

    Anyways, this made me think about the “intergenerational” exchange of knowledge. Each year of university students, graduate or first-year undergrad, does thigns a little differently. I have no idea of the grad students the next year used/found the online version of Deaton’s book. Similarly, in my first year of university, a couple of really intrepid computer engineering students set up an incredibly fast, university-wide file-sharing program (this was before bit-torrent and wireless internet) used by most, if not all on-compus residents. The next year’s residents didn’t have any such program.
    And the list could go on and on.

    Come up with the right variables, and you could have a great tool for estimating how the intergenerational transfer of knowledge is successful and how it fails.

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