Mostly Harmless Econometrics

“A quirky and thought-provoking read for any budding econometrician… Insightful and refreshing.”–James Davidson, Times Higher Education “I’d recommend it to the entire range of empirical economists, from those still in training to those who, like me, have only a hazy memory of statistical theory and stick to our tried and tested methods of estimation … an excellent guide to how to do basic regression/IV/panel data estimation really well. In particular, it demonstrates through many examples how to bring about a happy marriage between one’s underlying model and the data which might or might not confirm the researcher’s hypotheses.”–Diane Coyle, The Enlightened Economist Blog “The applied econometric methods emphasized in this book are easy to use and relevant for many areas of contemporary social sciences.”–Pavel Stoynov, Zentralblatt MATH “[T]he matter covered in the book is surely of interest to most agricultural economists. Even if it is not a complete overview of existing econometric research methods, it certainly contains a good deal of hands on advice driven by years of experience.”–European Review of Agricultural Economics “This book is an extremely thought-provoking contribution to the literature. It champions a different paradigm to that characterising most econometrics texts and does so with considerable (idiosyncratic) style and grace. Highly recommended!”–David Harris and Christopher L. Skeels, Economic Record

Joshua D. Angrist, winner of the 2021 Nobel Prize in Economics, is the Ford Professor of Economics at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Jörn-Steffen Pischke is professor of economics at the London School of Economics and Political Science.