Real Econometrics: The Right Tools to Answer Important Questions 2nd Edition

This book introduces the econometric tools necessary to answer important questions. Do antipoverty programs work? Does unemployment affect inflation? Does campaign spending affect election outcomes? These and many more questions are not only interesting but also important to answer correctly if we want to support policies that are good for people, countries, and the world.

When using econometrics to answer such questions, we need always to remember a single big idea: correlation is not causation. Just because variable Y rises when variable X rises does not mean that variable X causes variable Y to rise. The essential goal is to figure out when we can say that changes in variable X will lead to changes in variable Y.