st: Re: elementary texts

[Kit Baum <baum@bc.edu>]

sacrificial radish

I use my own text as a recommended book in an undergraduate  
econometrics class at BC, as do two other instructors. We use Jeff  
Wooldridge's Inroductory Econometrics: A Modern Approach as the main  
text. I also use my text as a recommended book in first-year PhD  
econometrics, with Bill Greene's book as a main text. It is essential  
that our first year PhD students gain some hands-on experience with a  
stats package, as many of them are working part-time during the  
summer on a professor's research project. As most faculty use Stata  
in their research, experience with using Stata to do econometrics is  
very important.

If I did not use Wooldridge for undergrad econometrics, I would use  
Stock and Watson's text Introduction to Econometrics. Both are a cut  
above the rest of the pack in terms of motivating important concepts  
in econometrics (such as widespread reliance on robust standard  
errors) and drawing examples from real-world data sets (often those  
used in published articles). The one down side of the data sets with  
Bill Greene's book is that they are all small, pedagogical data sets  
rather than full-scale research data. All of these data sets and more  
can be accessed in Stata format from

http://ideas.repec.org/s/boc/bocins.html

There are some instructors in the UK who are relying on my text as  
the main book for their course. The book was not intended to replace  
something like Wooldridge or S&W as an introduction to the theory of  
econometrics, but for higher-level students who have had a prior  
course covering the theory of regression, it could well serve. Amazon  
has quite a bit of additional material regarding the book (although  
it is generally cheaper to buy it directly from stata-press.com).


Kit Baum, Boston College Economics and DIW Berlin
http://ideas.repec.org/e/pba1.html
An Introduction to Modern Econometrics Using Stata:
http://www.stata-press.com/books/imeus.html


On May 20, 2007, at 2:33 AM, Richard wrote:


> At 10:30 PM 5/19/2007, Scott Cunningham wrote:
> > Is Christopher Baum's book appropriate for that class?  What is the
> > ideal course for Baum's book, anyway?  I'm teaching masters level
> > econometrics in the spring 2008 for the first time and have yet to
> > pick a text, and was wondering whether that one might suit.
> Here is the description of Kit's book, and a link to the preface is  
> included:
>
> http://www.stata.com/bookstore/imeus.html
>
> I find William Greene's Econometrics text pretty hard to read, but it
> is #1 in the field, isn't it?  He does provide example datasets in
> several formats, including Stata.  I suspect it is worth looking at
> even if you don't wind up using it.
*
*   For searches and help try:
*   http://www.stata.com/support/faqs/res/findit.html
*   http://www.stata.com/support/statalist/faq
*   http://www.ats.ucla.edu/stat/stata/