Here are the five problem sets you’ll need to complete through the course. Observe the deadlines for these problem sets in the course description.

I’ve attached an answer template for your consideration as well. Download this file (i.e. right-click the link and save): eh6127-ps1-svensson-sven.Rmd. Open it in Rstudio, take a quick look at its contents, and then press the “Knit” button. In the same directory in which you saved the R Markdown file, there’ll be a corresponding Word document. Open that in your Word document reader to see what you did. From there, you might be able to follow your intuition as to what’s happening. You can read more about R Markdown here.

  • Problem Set #1

    The first problem set makes use of the Systemic Banking Crises Database II in {stevedata} to learn about basic data summary, data exploration, and data manipulation.
  • Problem Set #2

    The second problem set makes use of the african_coups data set in {stevedata} to learn about basic descriptive statistics, recoding things, and, importantly, how you should always read the codebook and the fine print of articles you read.
  • Problem Set #3

    The third problem introduces students to simple bivariate linear regression by way of a classic chicken-and-egg problem in political science/IR: the relationship between democracy and economic development. The data—Lipset59 in {stevedata}—will be an homage to Lipset’s (1959) modernization thesis.
  • Problem Set #4

    The fourth problem set makes use of replication data of Ghobarah et. al (2004) to prompt students to replicate a published analysis in the field of international relations.
  • Problem Set #5

    The final problem set makes use of USFAHR in {stevedata} to learn about linear model diagnostics. The topic will be an analysis of the kind that occupied considerable attention for scholars on human rights and U.S. foreign aid allocation in the 1980s and 1990s: whether the U.S. is serious about human rights records when it makes economic aid obligations to target countries. Legally, it’s supposed to be. But let’s be real…