In the Fall semester of 2021, I took Econ 485 – Econometrics, which is the capstone course for my Business Economics degree. The PSU bulletin describes this course as “Applying statistical techniques to test and explain economic relationships; integration of economic theory with observed economic phenomena.”
To achieve this, we were introduced to the statistics program R. I had never interacted with this software before and it has quite the learning curve. A major part of the course centers around the final project which had to be done in R, so over the course of the semester the students were expected to become proficient.
I decided on the topic ‘The Impact of Square Footage on Real Estate Value in Allegheny County, PA’.
I chose this topic because I am from Allegheny county so I figured I would do a topic close to home, I have always been interested in real estate, and I found a phenomenal database to use that included every parcel in the county.
Data was published by the Western Pennsylvania Regional Data Center. The original data set included 581,109 parcel observations with 87 variable columns. After filtering the data extensively, I was left with 56,889 parcel observations and 14 variables. So many observations allowed me to produce a final OLS regression that was overwhelmingly significant and showed clear economic trends. I received an A grade for this research paper.
The following semester, Spring 2022, I was invited to present at the Business Showcase by my professor. This showcase is an opportunity for students to present their interesting research and campus involvement. I also gave a presentation about the VAR Lab the same day!
