Capstone in Political Economy

IPEC/PECO—4980, Spring 2025

Author

Parushya

Published

March 19, 2025

Introduction

This web book is meant to be a one-stop resource for all data and analysis related tasks in the Capstone in Political Economy course.

The pages will correspond to Data and Analysis sections in the course.

The notes here will use R as a programming language and RStudio as platform (or technically known as IDE - Integrated Development Platform) of choice. However, all the concepts will also be valid for Stata users. I will include any important/relevant deviations between the two programming statistical software approaches here.

You should start by having the following installed on your computers:

  1. R - Statistical Programming Language

  2. RStudio - Interactive Development Environment for R

  3. Stata - Statistical Software Package (the “other” one)

  4. Zotero - Reference Management Tool

  5. GitHub - Storing code online with version control

R and R Studio

Use the link here to install RStudio on your systems.

Stata

Stata is a paid software. Georgetown provides download option through the university webstore here.

Zotero

Zotero is a reference management tool. It allows you to maintain a structured bibliography. Its integration with various web browsers and software like MS Word and R, makes it a fantastic tool for keeping track of readings as well as citing them.

Zotero Folder

Zotero Folder
  1. Make Zotero Account.
  2. Add a connector to the browser (For eg, zotero connector for google chrome).
  3. Download Zotero Desktop App here.
  4. Connect Zotero to R Studio. (We will do this step on Day 5, using the link here).

GitHub

Make your account here