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Many of you wanted to know what 121 will be like (I will be teaching it
in Spring 1999).  Here is a summary of what the course is all about.

Econ 121 will be devoted to giving students practical experience in
doing applied econometric work.  All stages will be covered, from model
building to estimation, testing, and interpretation.
 
For the first three weeks, I will cover the materials that were not
covered in 120C.  Thereafter the class students will meet me individually
in my office at least once a week to discuss individual projects.
 
There will be no written final exam, but instead, an independent project
is required.  Students choose their own empirical problem in economics,
with some help from me and other professors, collect the relevant data,
estimate appropriate models using necessary techniques, and write a report
describing all the stages of the empirical work. 

While this sounds like both fun and rewarding, I must warn you that it is a
very time-consuming course.  The dropout rate is very high.  However, if you
are interested in econometrics and in jobs that might use it, then ECON 121
is a must (you should take 178 also, to complete the empirical training). 

If you plan to take the course and want to get a headstart, read Chapter 14
of my book on selecting a topic and collecting data.
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