Did legal abortion lower crime in the United States, as a famous 2001 study claimed? Instead of hand-picking a few control variables, we let a data-driven method choose among 284 candidates and check whether the original finding holds up. This R tutorial comes with an interactive app that runs in your web browser.
What happens to nearby home prices when a registered sex offender moves into a neighborhood? We compare homes close to the address with homes a little farther away, before and after the move, and show how the distance chosen as the cutoff can change the answer. This R tutorial comes with an interactive app that runs in your web browser.
An introduction to regional impact evaluation using modern causal-inference methods with worked examples and publicly available data for full reproducibility.
Did expanding Medicaid health coverage to low-income adults reduce deaths? We compare counties in states that expanded coverage with counties in states that did not, and show how counting each county equally or each person equally can change the answer. This R tutorial includes an interactive app that runs in your web browser.
Did the carbon tax that Sweden introduced in 1991 cut carbon emissions from transport, and did it hurt the economy? This Python tutorial builds a look-alike Sweden from other wealthy countries and finds transport emissions about 11 percent lower each year, with no sign of slower economic growth. It comes with an interactive app that runs in your web browser.
Did the 1988 California cigarette tax reduce cigarette sales, and do different methods agree on how much? This R tutorial applies six ways of evaluating a policy to the same data and finds that most point to a drop of roughly 13 to 20 packs per person each year. It comes with an interactive app that runs in your web browser.
How much did the 1988 California tobacco tax reduce cigarette sales? We build a look-alike California from other states and also measure how the policy spilled over to neighboring states such as Nevada, where people cross the border to buy cigarettes. This R tutorial comes with an interactive app that runs in your web browser.
Do good institutions make countries richer? This Python tutorial revisits the 2001 study by Acemoglu, Johnson and Robinson, which uses death rates of early European settlers in 64 former colonies to isolate the effect of institutions, and shows that a simple comparison understates that effect. It comes with an interactive app that runs in your web browser.
Do good institutions make countries richer? Following the 2001 study by Acemoglu, Johnson and Robinson in Stata, we use the death rates of early European settlers in 64 former colonies as a natural experiment, and find an effect much larger than a simple comparison suggests. The tutorial includes an interactive app that runs in your web browser.
Does mining wealth help or hurt local development, and do good local institutions make the difference? This Python tutorial uses causal machine learning on simulated district data with known true effects to measure how the impact of mining and mineral prices varies from place to place. It comes with an interactive app that runs in your web browser.