Mostly Harmless Econometrics: An Empiricist's Companion,   ISBN:9780691120355

Customer Rating: 

I purchased the book for its last chapter on clustered std errors, and am happy I did it.

Customer Rating: 

Angrist and Pischke's book indiscriminately mixes four levels of discussion: the philosophical and methodological issues around causality, tips and tricks on how the apply the workhorse models of (micro)econometrics, case studies, and the mathematical properties of models and estimators. The authors keep switching constantly between these four levels rather than presenting them sequentially, making the book very hard to read and follow.

The problem is compounded by the sketchiness of the mathematical derivations and the lack of a precise definition of the key idea of 'causality'.

The issues raised in this book are no doubt important for the working econometrician, but clearer expositions can be found, for eg., in Wooldridge's Introductory Econometrics and Econometric Analysis of Cross Section and Panel Data.

Customer Rating: 

I'm not sure what book the other people were reading, but this book was hardly clear and easy to understand. I've taken a graduate Econometrics class and several others regarding statistics, and this book is not for the lay reader to understand econometrics. It is written in a very confusing manner and is not an entry level book. Maybe if you were a PHD candidate or have a MS in mathmatics you would understand it better. I would buy a used Econometrics textbook before buying this one.

Customer Rating: 

Amazing book and very helpful, but a terrible idea to buy this on Kindle. The graphs and variables are all formatted strangely, making it hard to read.

Customer Rating: 

After drowning in Heckman, cursing Rubin and struggling with Manski, this is a welcome and needed relief. I think back to what "Thinking Strategically" was to Game Theory and must conclude that having fun must be regular and necessary phase in the gestation of an idea.
The authors take delight in the subject and dole out some of the most interesting applications from a field that's a testament to soporifics.
Trust me...if it weren't for Monster Energy drinks, none of us would understand this stuff.
Their mathematics is approachable by anyone who knows what an expectation is. They take on such opaque subjects as instrumental variables and differences-of-differences with some examples that I promise will stay with you even after you've put the book down. The subjects connect with a real ease and you're never left referring back to earlier chapters or other texts to "remember" something they've assumed you know.
On whole, they approach the subject with a joy I haven't seen since I saw a couple of otters on a water slide on the side of an island in Alaska.