IPECE 2019 Programme

This year’s Irish Postgraduate and Early Career Economics Workshop will be hosted by the Discipline of Economics at NUI Galway on Thursday June 6th and Friday June 7th. The event is aimed at PhD students, PostDocs, early career researchers and advanced Masters students based in higher education and research institutions on the island of Ireland. The meeting will feature the work and findings of scholars in economics and related fields and will provide an excellent opportunity to engage with research results and work-in-progress in a welcoming and constructive environment. We encourage those working on economics research to attend.

This year the workshop will include a range of thematic sessions and training events, including full paper thematic sessions with discussants and early-stage/emerging research findings thematic sessions with general open discussion. Both will take place on Friday June 7th, along with a short training session on ‘Publishing your Research in Peer-Reviewed Journals – Tips from Journal Editors’. In addition, a workshop on ‘An Introduction to Machine Learning for Economists’ will take place on the afternoon of Thursday June 6th (see below), followed by a social event that evening. While the abstract submission date has passed, it is still possible to register to attend the workshop and associated training events, which are free. Please do so at https://www.eventbrite.ie/e/irish-postgraduate-and-early-career-economics-ipece-workshop-at-nui-galway-tickets-56359973197 .

Workshop Programme

The programme is available at http://www.nuigalway.ie/media/publicsub-sites/economics/files/other/Draft-Programme.pdf

Workshop Venue

The workshop will take place in the JE Cairnes Building at NUI Galway. Please see Building 22 at https://www.nuigalway.ie/media/buildingsoffice/files/maps/M12122_General_CampusMapWEBpdf220217.pdf. For details about getting to NUI Galway, please visit http://www.nuigalway.ie/about-us/contact-us/how-to-find-us.html. Please note that on campus parking is very limited and we suggest parking off site if travelling by car.

IPECE Training Event – An Introduction to Machine Learning for Economists

This training event will be delivered by Dr. Achim Ahrens from the Economic and Social Research Institute (ESRI) on Thursday 6th June from 1pm to 5pm. It will provide an overview of popular Machine Learning techniques and the focus will be on LASSO regression, a regularization and model selection method that can deal with high-dimensional data. It will also discuss how the LASSO and other Machine Learning tools can be useful for economists; in particular, how Machine Learning can improve predictions and facilitate causal inference. The presentation will be followed by a demonstration using the Stata packages LASSOPACK and PDSLASSO. Please visit the Eventbrite link above to register to attend.

Contact
The local organising committee consists of Laura Carter, John Cullinan, Daniel Cassidy, Jason Harold, Dan Kelleher, Doris Laepple, Luke McGrath, Shikha Sharma and Michelle Queally at NUI Galway. Please direct inquiries to IPECE2019@gmail.com.

Support
Generous support from the Irish Economic Association (IEA) and the Discipline of Economics at NUI Galway is gratefully acknowledged.

By John Cullinan

John Cullinan is Professor in Economics at University of Galway. He is an applied economist with research interests in health, disability and higher education.