Syllabus
The course Empirical Legal Studies covers the following topics:
1. The causal questions in empirical research in law
2. Randomized controlled trials
3. Using the statistical software
4. Analyzing experimental data – basic statistics, plots, and tests.
5. Introduction to natural experiments
6. Regressions
7. Difference-in-differences
8. Instrumental variables
9. Regression discontinuity design
10. Panel data and fixed effects
11. Matching
Annotation
The elective course Empirical Legal Studies (taught in English) develops core skills and knowledge necessary for conducting, as well as understanding, empirical research in law.
The course focuses on tools for studying causal questions, as opposed to data description or formal statistical theory. The building block of this course is the randomized control trial, which represents a gold standard in empirical work. After that, the course focuses on identification techniques in non-RCT settings.
The course graduates will develop the following skills:
- To conduct empirical research in law using several most common empirical methods.
- To analyze social science data (with a particular focus on legal data)
- To critical read literature in the field of Empirical Legal Studies.
The course requires prior acquaintance with basic statistics and/or econometrics. Before enrolling in this course, students are required to have taken an introductory statistics course (or its equivalent). A prior experience in research or having taken a course in research methods is an advantage.
Regular students at the Faculty of Law, Charles University are highly recommended to take Statistics for Lawyers (HP3027) and Introduction to the Methodology of Social Sciences for Lawyers (HV3710), or comparable courses.
The course cannot be taken repeatedly.