ECON-677 GIS Applications in Empirical Economics (3)

This course introduces common geographic information system (GIS) tools used in empirical economics and other social sciences, with a focus on applications in development studies. The first part of the course covers GIS fundamentals including data visualization, standard geoprocessing tools for vector and raster data, georeferencing and digitization, as well as the basics of Python scripting. The second part is organized around topics and methods including the measurement of distances and network analysis, the use of satellite data on night lights to capture economic performance, construction of diversity metrics based on digital ethnolinguistic and population maps, spatial regression discontinuity design, and processing of climate datasets with a time dimension. Each major theme of the course involves replication exercises reproducing GIS elements of recently published economics articles.