So far your economics coursework has trained you how to make judgements such as: "When the price of gasoline increases, the quantity demanded will decrease." "If the income elasticity of fish is greater than one, then fish is a luxury food." You are able to make these statements because you have learned concepts such as opportunity cost, marginal cost pricing, and efficiency.

In the job market, potential employers will ask: "What can you do for this company?" If you can tell them about the demand for gasoline or whatever, that's nice. However, in this course you will learn to make quantitative judgements. You can tell that employer: "I can estimate that if the price of gas increases by 50 cents, your sales will decrease by $8,000,000/year." You will have an additional skill that students from a traditional economics program will not have.

In econometrics, we use economic theory to make hypotheses about economic relationships. Then we analyze data in a linear regression model, where we explain how something (like gas consumption) is affected by causal factors like price, income, etc. Then we test our hypotheses and make predictions. Enjoy the course.

Warren Kriesel, Assoc. Prof.    Click here to send me an e-mail or visit my webpage.

Charlie's Bunion, Great Smoky Mountains National Park.

News

Our second lab sessions will be on Wed., Feb 1. If your last name is between Bain and Martin, be in the computer lab 12:20-1:10. If your last name is between Mattingly and Zhang, be in the lab 1:25-2:15.



Course Materials

Click here for a tutorial on using SAS software.

Click here for the Course Syllabus.