causal inference · Live labs
Instrumental Variables in Practice
First-stage strength, overidentification tests, and writing about local average treatment effects.
ZAR 1 350 · 6 weeks
Software: R · Method focus: IV · Level: advanced · Assessment: paper review
Description
Practice first-stage storytelling, weak instrument diagnostics, and transparent reporting when IV estimates differ from OLS. Includes ethics discussion on plausible instruments.
What is included
- First-stage table workshop
- Weak IV simulation notebook
- Peer critique of exclusion restriction paragraphs
- Mentor examples from labour and education
- Robustness matrix template
- Office hour on heterogeneous compliance
Outcomes
- Report first-stage diagnostics alongside IV estimates
- Describe LATE clearly to policy readers
- Flag when IV is the wrong tool
Dr. Fatima Noor
Econometrician with field experience in education RCTs and IV designs.
Reviews
Weak IV section stopped us from shipping a headline number our board would have misread.
Questions
Not in this course; see Bayesian Regression for Analysts for priors on instruments.
Yes — overid tests and Sargan/Hansen interpretation are covered.
We discuss finite-sample issues and bootstrap intuition without full derivations.