Mixtape Sessions Workshop Announcement: Causal Inference II

Difference-in-differences and synthetic control workshop (March 18-19, 25-26).

As some of you know, I host workshops on a platform I call Mixtape Sessions where I, using price discrimination, try to “democratize causal inference” through low cost, high quality workshops. Most of the workshops are taught by really phenomenal econometricians like Peter Hull, Jon Roth, Brigham Frandsen, Alberto Abadie and my newest speaker, Rocío Titunik. But every now and then, I mix things up by having a mere mortal teach a workshop and next week that mortal is me!

Next week, on Saturday, March 18th, at 8am, my Causal Inference II workshop will begin. This has been for the last year one of my more popular workshops, consistently selling out and with very strong participant reviews. It’s a deep dive into difference-in-differences concluding with a few of the synthetic control estimators. The workshop lasts four days, spread out over two weekends, from 8am to 5pm CST. I focus on a few things:

• Comprehension — I do my best to try and bring participants along to a deeper understanding of the issues in difference-in-differences from its most basic levels to more advanced complex situations, including much of the newest material on differential timing. I think taking my workshop would really put you in a good spot to then take Advanced Diff in Diff with Jon Roth.

• Competency — we go through a lot of code in R and Stata, including simulations and replications.

• Confidence — my goal is to make all of this material less opaque and that happens through a lot of things, like watching the methods in action, and having a deep understanding as to precisely what calculations are being made and how those calculations then do or do not map onto the causal effect you’re interested in.

The course covers what I consider to the basic elements of difference-in-differences with a potential outcomes review, the definition of the ATT parameter and the diff in diff equation itself (“four averages, three differences” - Orley Ashenfelter). It moves into issues around violations of the parallel trends assumption, how you might go about checking for that, and alternative approaches that might be helpful. It’s very much focused on the science and the art of the method, too. What pictures are traditionally made, the importance of those visuals, the role that good falsifications have, and so forth. Below is a list of the dates and what I am going to try and cover. And here is a link to the slides and assignments, as well as some of the things I will be covering listed in /Readings, at our GitHub repository.

And remember — there is price discrimination. The goal is help democratize causal inference and I use price discrimination to target three groups who differ in ability to pay. They are:

1. Current Residents of Low Income Countries. Discount is $1 USD. I use this list to determine what is a “low income country”, but note the discount goes to someone currently living in one of these countries, not from the country. Please just send me proof of residence in the email.

2. Current residents of middle income countries, students of any kind, predoc RAs, postdocs and people in between jobs. Discount is $50 USD. Please send me a photo ID so I can verify or anything that can help me know your status.

3. Everyone else. $595. My hope is that your chair or employer or research budgets cover this, though.

But regarding that last category: I know that some people are in departments where they have none of these for whatever reason. Please write me and tell me this. If you’re wanting to come, but you don’t have a sponsor, just come and talk to me and we can figure something out. If you do have a sponsor, research money, or some way of doing this, though, I ask that you would.

These workshops use price discrimination and scale to cover speakers’ opportunity costs. But Mixtape Sessions isn’t trying to maximize profits by any means. Everyone involved just cares about reaching as many people as possible and reducing some of difficulty people have with this material by going at it in a targeted way, letting you hear it from different people, and giving you access to materials, including recordings, Discord channel, and assignments that we hope can help take you to the next level.

So come check it out! I think it’s going to be a fun time.