Governments and development partners face growing pressure to show that policies are grounded in evidence, from the design of cash transfer programmes to the case for a new road or tax change. Analysts are expected to work with large survey and administrative data sets, apply credible methods for estimating cause and effect, and communicate their results to people who will never read a regression table.

The Data and Analytics for Applied Economics & Policy Analysis Training Course takes participants through that process over five days. It begins with economic data sources, data structures and reproducible cleaning workflows, then moves to descriptive analysis, poverty and distributional measurement. The middle of the week is devoted to regression analysis and the methods economists use to estimate the impact of programmes and policies when randomised trials are not available. The final day brings in forecasting, appraisal of public investments and the craft of turning technical findings into short, persuasive policy outputs.

Every session is computer-based. Participants work in Stata or R on real public data sets, follow guided scripts they can reuse, and complete a short applied policy analysis that combines estimation, interpretation and a written brief.

Participants completing the five days will be able to:

• Locate, import and combine economic data from surveys, administrative records and international databases.
• Clean and document data sets using reproducible scripts in Stata or R.
• Measure poverty, inequality and distributional change using standard indicators.
• Estimate and interpret OLS and panel regression models for policy questions.
• Apply difference-in-differences, regression discontinuity and matching methods to evaluate impact.
• Produce simple forecasts and a cost-benefit analysis for a public investment.
• Communicate findings and uncertainty in policy briefs and charts for decision-makers.

The course is aimed at analysts who supply evidence for economic and social policy, notably:

• Economists in ministries of finance, planning and trade
• Policy analysts in central banks and revenue authorities
• Statisticians in national statistics offices
• Researchers in think tanks, universities and policy institutes
• Monitoring and evaluation specialists working on impact studies
• Economists and programme officers in development agencies
• Parliamentary budget office analysts

At the end of the week participants hold:

• A reusable data cleaning and analysis script library in Stata or R.
• A worked poverty and inequality profile from household survey data.
• Annotated regression and impact evaluation outputs with interpretation notes.
• A cost-benefit analysis template for public investment appraisal.
• A two-page policy brief based on their own analysis.

Teaching is computer-based and applied, featuring:

• Guided Stata and R scripts that participants run and adapt
• Real public data sets from household surveys and international databases
• Short method briefings followed immediately by lab exercises
• Peer review of interpretation and policy recommendations
• A capstone policy analysis presented on the final day

Participants receive a CPD-accredited Certificate of Completion issued by Vision Reach Global Consultancy once they have attended the sessions and submitted the lab exercises and final policy analysis.