National Workshop on Basic Applied Econometrics

The Department of Economics of IIS (deemed to be University) organized a five-day National Workshop on Basic Applied Econometrics from 26-30 December, 2018. It was attended by 52 participants including students, research scholars and faculty members. Each day of the workshop consisted of four sessions from 10 am to 4 pm with intermittent breaks for a refreshing breakfast, lunch and tea.

The first day of the workshop began with a welcome note by Dr. Anima Vaish, Organizing Secretary of the workshop. She also introduced the resource person of the workshop, Prof. Pranab Banerji, who was associated with the Indian Institute of Public Administration (IIPA) as Professor of Economics from 2001 to 2015. He was welcomed by the Vice Chancellor, Dr. Ashok Gupta with a memento. Dr. Gupta stressed on the growing importance of econometrics in various arenas of academic studies. He then invited Prof. Banerji to commence the workshop. Prof. Banerji started with a brief introduction of self and an introduction to econometrics. Econometrics is a discipline based on application of statistical techniques for empirical analysis of various theories. He briefly described the plan of the workshop and how it would help in building the foundation of econometrics. With this, the inaugural session came to an end and was followed by refreshments.

After refreshments began the other sessions for the first day, which covered topics like sampling, statistical inference, methods of estimation, desirable properties of estimators and hypothesis testing. In the last session, Prof. Banerji also introduced the popularly used software of econometrics, EViews, which was to be used for the subsequent days of the workshop. The participants learned the user interface of EViews- opening and creating workfile, importing data, generating series, etc.

Day 2 was centered towards bivariate analysis- assumptions of the classical linear regression model, estimation of regression equation, properties of OLS estimators and hypothesis testing of regression coefficients. This was followed by practical session of bivariate regression in EViews.

The focus of Day 3 was on multivariate analysis. The resource person, after a quick recap of the topics covered in the previous day, introduced the multiple linear regression model, its assumptions and interpretations. This was followed by practical exercises on EViews and use of Coefficient Diagnostics, which comprised of Omitted Variable Test, Redundant Variable Test and Wald Test. He also discussed the various criteria of choosing variables in a regression model.

As the foundation of simple and multiple regression models was built in the three days, Day 4 of the workshop was centered on violation of assumptions of the classical linear regression model- the problems of multicollinearity, heteroskedasticity and autocorrelation. Prof. Banerji dealt with the consequences, detection and remedial measures for each of these problems. The applications of these concepts were covered with practical exercises on EViews.

On the last day of the workshop, the resource person discussed some advanced topics in econometrics namely, endogeniety, instrumental variables and a way forward through Time Series and Panel Data analyses. Time series econometrics evolved during the 1980s as time series data cannot be easily analysed using the traditional methods of econometrics.  Prof. Banerji explained the concepts of stationarity, white noise, spurious regression, cointegration and VAR. He also went over the topics of panel data analysis- the random and fixed effects models. All these concepts were demonstrated using various exercises on EViews.

The workshop drew to a close with a few participants sharing their experiences and insights and thanking the resource person for elucidating the concepts with such innovative examples. Finally, Dr. Anima Vaish concluded with a formal vote of thanks. The workshop thus proved to be a great learning experience for all the participants.