Political Economy with R - An Integrated, Hands-on Introduction

What it is about

You will receive an integrated, practice-oriented introduction to political economy and the R programming language. You will learn to address political economy questions (especially climate policy as well as economic security, geopolitics and industrial policy) in a data-based manner: sourcing data, cleaning, visualising, and performing basic analyses.

What you will be able to do

• Describe core statements and debates of political economy (focus on climate & economic security)
• Understand the basic concepts of data science and apply them in R (tidyverse)
• critically assess theoretical arguments and transfer them to real-world problems
• identify empirical questions and visualise them with data

What the module consists of

• SeminarIntroduction to central concepts of political economy and introduction to R; combination of input and practical exercises
• intensives BlockseminarConcentrated introduction to importing, transforming and visualising data in R
• Hands-on CodingPractical application of the introduced R operations on real datasets

Teaching method

• KurzvorlesungenExplanation of concepts in political economy and of basic R operations
• praktische ProgrammierübungenApplying what has been learned to real data to reinforce R proficiency
• Datenvisualisierungs-AufgabeIndependent identification of an empirical puzzle and communicative presentation through visualisations
• regelmäßige KurztestsAssessment of practical R knowledge during the semester