Author: Dariia Mykhailyshyna

PhD Student in Economics at the University of Bologna

Agentic coding with R workshop

Join our workshop on Agentic coding with R,  which is a part of our workshops for Ukraine series! 


Here’s some more info: 


Title: Agentic coding with R 

Date: Thursday, April 2nd, 14:00 – 16:00 CET (Rome, Berlin, Paris timezone) 

Speaker: Charles Crabtree is a political scientist and Senior Lecturer in the School of Social Sciences at Monash University. His research sits at the intersection of political behavior, discrimination, and research methods, with work spanning experiments, text analysis, and large-scale observational data.

Description: This workshop introduces agentic coding for R: using AI assistants that can help you plan, write, run, and revise multi-step analysis workflows while keeping your work transparent and reproducible. Using Warp.dev as a concrete interface, we will walk through practical patterns for (1) turning messy research tasks into clear, checkable steps, (2) writing R code safely, (3) generating documentation and analysis notes as you work, and (4) developing a paper trail you can share with coauthors or future you. A key focus is adversarial agentic coding: pairing a “builder” agent with a separate “reviewer” agent that tries to break, audit, and improve the code the first agent produced—stress-testing assumptions, spotting silent failures, and proposing fixes. The emphasis is not on prompt tricks, but on reliable habits: how to constrain the agent, verify outputs, and integrate agentic help into real projects (data cleaning, modeling, tables and figures, and report generation). Participants will leave with copy-paste templates they can reuse immediately.

Minimal registration fee: 20 euro (or 20 USD or 800 UAH)






Please note that the registration confirmation is sent 1 day before the workshop to all registered participants rather than immediately after registration


How can I register?



  • Save your donation receipt (after the donation is processed, there is an option to enter your email address on the website to which the donation receipt is sent)

  • Fill in the registration form, attaching a screenshot of a donation receipt (please attach the screenshot of the donation receipt that was emailed to you rather than the page you see after donation).

If you are not personally interested in attending, you can also contribute by sponsoring a participation of a student, who will then be able to participate for free. If you choose to sponsor a student, all proceeds will also go directly to organisations working in Ukraine. You can either sponsor a particular student or you can leave it up to us so that we can allocate the sponsored place to students who have signed up for the waiting list.


How can I sponsor a student?


  • Save your donation receipt (after the donation is processed, there is an option to enter your email address on the website to which the donation receipt is sent)

  • Fill in the sponsorship form, attaching the screenshot of the donation receipt (please attach the screenshot of the donation receipt that was emailed to you rather than the page you see after the donation). You can indicate whether you want to sponsor a particular student or we can allocate this spot ourselves to the students from the waiting list. You can also indicate whether you prefer us to prioritize students from developing countries when assigning place(s) that you sponsored.


If you are a university student and cannot afford the registration fee, you can also sign up for the waiting list here. (Note that you are not guaranteed to participate by signing up for the waiting list).



You can also find more information about this workshop series,  a schedule of our future workshops as well as a list of our past workshops which you can get the recordings & materials here.


Looking forward to seeing you during the workshop!










 











Oops, Git! How to recover from common mistakes workshop

Join our workshop on  Oops, Git! How to recover from common mistakes, which is a part of our workshops for Ukraine series! 


Here’s some more info: 


Title: Oops, Git! How to recover from common mistakes

Date: Thursday, March 19th, 14:00 – 16:00 CET (Rome, Berlin, Paris timezone) 

Speaker: Maëlle Salmon, with a PhD in statistics, is a Research Software Engineer and blogger. At rOpenSci, she maintains the guide rOpenSci Packages: Development, Maintenance, and Peer Review, and has developed the babeldown and babelquarto packages for multilingual documents. At cynkra, she contributes to igraph and other packages. Maëlle is also the co-author of the book HTTP testing in R with Scott Chamberlain and created the R-hub blog. Additionally, she regularly contracts with various organizations, including research institutions, for R package development.

Description: Git is very useful. But it can also be scary when we make a mistake. Fortunately, with experience we make fewer mistakes… and/or we know better how to recover from them! In this hands-on workshop, we will learn how to get out of seven possible bad situations that can occur, with seven exercises inspired by the “Oh Shit, Git!” website https://ohshitgit.com/ and provided by the R package {saperlipopette}. https://docs.ropensci.org/saperlipopette/index.html By the end of this workshop, we’ll feel more capable of dealing with Git and our own fallibility.

This workshop is aimed at people who already have some experience using version control, although you don’t need to be an expert. It’s ideal for those who want to strengthen their confidence and autonomy in difficult situations.

Minimal registration fee: 20 euro (or 20 USD or 800 UAH)





Please note that the registration confirmation is sent 1 day before the workshop to all registered participants rather than immediately after registration


How can I register?



  • Save your donation receipt (after the donation is processed, there is an option to enter your email address on the website to which the donation receipt is sent)

  • Fill in the registration form, attaching a screenshot of a donation receipt (please attach the screenshot of the donation receipt that was emailed to you rather than the page you see after donation).

If you are not personally interested in attending, you can also contribute by sponsoring a participation of a student, who will then be able to participate for free. If you choose to sponsor a student, all proceeds will also go directly to organisations working in Ukraine. You can either sponsor a particular student or you can leave it up to us so that we can allocate the sponsored place to students who have signed up for the waiting list.


How can I sponsor a student?


  • Save your donation receipt (after the donation is processed, there is an option to enter your email address on the website to which the donation receipt is sent)

  • Fill in the sponsorship form, attaching the screenshot of the donation receipt (please attach the screenshot of the donation receipt that was emailed to you rather than the page you see after the donation). You can indicate whether you want to sponsor a particular student or we can allocate this spot ourselves to the students from the waiting list. You can also indicate whether you prefer us to prioritize students from developing countries when assigning place(s) that you sponsored.


If you are a university student and cannot afford the registration fee, you can also sign up for the waiting list here. (Note that you are not guaranteed to participate by signing up for the waiting list).



You can also find more information about this workshop series,  a schedule of our future workshops as well as a list of our past workshops which you can get the recordings & materials here.


Looking forward to seeing you during the workshop!










 









A practical introduction to multiple imputation of missing data with the R-package mice workshop

Join our workshop on A practical introduction to multiple imputation of missing data with the R-package mice, which is a part of our workshops for Ukraine series! 


Here’s some more info: 


Title: A practical introduction to multiple imputation of missing data with the R-package mice

Date: Thursday, January 22nd, 18:00 – 20:00 CET (Rome, Berlin, Paris timezone) 

Speaker: Thom Volker is a PhD candidate in Methodology and Statistics at Utrecht University. His research focuses on missing data, data privacy, and Bayesian statistics. He has contributed to the R package mice and is the author of the densityratio package.

Description: Missing data poses a challenge in many applied research settings. Although ad hoc methods such as listwise deletion or mean imputation are easy to implement, they can introduce substantial bias and lead to inefficient or invalid inferences. Multiple imputation offers a principled alternative that often improves statistical power and reduces bias.


In this session, you will learn when multiple imputation is appropriate and how to implement it effectively. We will cover essential topics such as specifying imputation models, evaluating the quality of imputations, and analyzing multiply imputed data in both inferential and predictive settings. By the end of the session, you will be equipped to address common missing-data problems using the mice package in R.

Minimal registration fee: 20 euro (or 20 USD or 800 UAH)





Please note that the registration confirmation is sent 1 day before the workshop to all registered participants rather than immediately after registration


How can I register?



  • Save your donation receipt (after the donation is processed, there is an option to enter your email address on the website to which the donation receipt is sent)

  • Fill in the registration form, attaching a screenshot of a donation receipt (please attach the screenshot of the donation receipt that was emailed to you rather than the page you see after donation).

If you are not personally interested in attending, you can also contribute by sponsoring a participation of a student, who will then be able to participate for free. If you choose to sponsor a student, all proceeds will also go directly to organisations working in Ukraine. You can either sponsor a particular student or you can leave it up to us so that we can allocate the sponsored place to students who have signed up for the waiting list.


How can I sponsor a student?


  • Save your donation receipt (after the donation is processed, there is an option to enter your email address on the website to which the donation receipt is sent)

  • Fill in the sponsorship form, attaching the screenshot of the donation receipt (please attach the screenshot of the donation receipt that was emailed to you rather than the page you see after the donation). You can indicate whether you want to sponsor a particular student or we can allocate this spot ourselves to the students from the waiting list. You can also indicate whether you prefer us to prioritize students from developing countries when assigning place(s) that you sponsored.


If you are a university student and cannot afford the registration fee, you can also sign up for the waiting list here. (Note that you are not guaranteed to participate by signing up for the waiting list).



You can also find more information about this workshop series,  a schedule of our future workshops as well as a list of our past workshops which you can get the recordings & materials here.


Looking forward to seeing you during the workshop!










 











R Package Development in Positron workshop

Join our workshop on R Package Development in Positron, which is a part of our workshops for Ukraine series! 


Here’s some more info: 


Title: R Package Development in Positron

Date: Thursday, January 15th, 18:00 – 20:00 CET (Rome, Berlin, Paris timezone) 

Speaker: Stephen D. Turner is an associate professor of data science at the University of Virginia School of Data Science. Prior to re-joining UVA he was a data scientist in national security and defense consulting, and later at a biotech company (Colossal – the de-extinction company) where he built and deployed scores of R packages.

Description: This workshop will cover R package development in Positron using devtools, usethis, testthat, covr, and a few AI tools along the way to help.

Minimal registration fee: 20 euro (or 20 USD or 800 UAH)




Please note that the registration confirmation is sent 1 day before the workshop to all registered participants rather than immediately after registration


How can I register?



  • Save your donation receipt (after the donation is processed, there is an option to enter your email address on the website to which the donation receipt is sent)

  • Fill in the registration form, attaching a screenshot of a donation receipt (please attach the screenshot of the donation receipt that was emailed to you rather than the page you see after donation).

If you are not personally interested in attending, you can also contribute by sponsoring a participation of a student, who will then be able to participate for free. If you choose to sponsor a student, all proceeds will also go directly to organisations working in Ukraine. You can either sponsor a particular student or you can leave it up to us so that we can allocate the sponsored place to students who have signed up for the waiting list.


How can I sponsor a student?


  • Save your donation receipt (after the donation is processed, there is an option to enter your email address on the website to which the donation receipt is sent)

  • Fill in the sponsorship form, attaching the screenshot of the donation receipt (please attach the screenshot of the donation receipt that was emailed to you rather than the page you see after the donation). You can indicate whether you want to sponsor a particular student or we can allocate this spot ourselves to the students from the waiting list. You can also indicate whether you prefer us to prioritize students from developing countries when assigning place(s) that you sponsored.


If you are a university student and cannot afford the registration fee, you can also sign up for the waiting list here. (Note that you are not guaranteed to participate by signing up for the waiting list).



You can also find more information about this workshop series,  a schedule of our future workshops as well as a list of our past workshops which you can get the recordings & materials here.


Looking forward to seeing you during the workshop!










 









Inference for non-probability samples with nonprobsvy package in R workshop

Join our workshop on Inference for non-probability samples with nonprobsvy package in R, which is a part of our workshops for Ukraine series! 


Here’s some more info: 


Title: Inference for non-probability samples with nonprobsvy package in R

Date: Thursday, January 8th, 18:00 – 20:00 CET (Rome, Berlin, Paris timezone) 

Speaker: Maciej Beręsewicz, an R enthusiast, co-organiser of several R conferences including European R Users Meeting 2016, and an R developer. Currently employed as an assistant professor in the Department of Statistics, Poznan University of Economics and Business, and the head of the Centre for the Methodology of Population Studies at the Statistical Office in Poznan. Main research topics: non-probability samples, administrative data, and population size estimation.

Description: During the workshop, the following topics will be covered: 1) basic theory of inference for non-probability samples, 2) how to use population-level information as well as probability samples to correct selection bias using various ways (inverse probability weighting, mass imputation, and double robust approach), 3) how to use the nonprobsvy package to estimate population mean through case studies, 4) how to estimate uncertainty and report results in R. For more details, please see the following working paper: Chrostowski, Chlebicki & Beręsewicz, (2025). nonprobsvy–An R package for modern methods for non-probability surveys. arXiv preprint arXiv:2504.04255 (accepted to the Journal of Statistical Software).

Minimal registration fee: 20 euro (or 20 USD or 800 UAH)




Please note that the registration confirmation is sent 1 day before the workshop to all registered participants rather than immediately after registration


How can I register?



  • Save your donation receipt (after the donation is processed, there is an option to enter your email address on the website to which the donation receipt is sent)

  • Fill in the registration form, attaching a screenshot of a donation receipt (please attach the screenshot of the donation receipt that was emailed to you rather than the page you see after donation).

If you are not personally interested in attending, you can also contribute by sponsoring a participation of a student, who will then be able to participate for free. If you choose to sponsor a student, all proceeds will also go directly to organisations working in Ukraine. You can either sponsor a particular student or you can leave it up to us so that we can allocate the sponsored place to students who have signed up for the waiting list.


How can I sponsor a student?


  • Save your donation receipt (after the donation is processed, there is an option to enter your email address on the website to which the donation receipt is sent)

  • Fill in the sponsorship form, attaching the screenshot of the donation receipt (please attach the screenshot of the donation receipt that was emailed to you rather than the page you see after the donation). You can indicate whether you want to sponsor a particular student or we can allocate this spot ourselves to the students from the waiting list. You can also indicate whether you prefer us to prioritize students from developing countries when assigning place(s) that you sponsored.


If you are a university student and cannot afford the registration fee, you can also sign up for the waiting list here. (Note that you are not guaranteed to participate by signing up for the waiting list).



You can also find more information about this workshop series,  a schedule of our future workshops as well as a list of our past workshops which you can get the recordings & materials here.


Looking forward to seeing you during the workshop!










 











A Gentle Introduction to Mathematical Simulation in R workshop

Join our workshop on A Gentle Introduction to Mathematical Simulation in R, which is a part of our workshops for Ukraine series! 


Here’s some more info: 


Title:A Gentle Introduction to Mathematical Simulation in R

Date: Thursday, December 11th, 18:00 – 20:00 CET (Rome, Berlin, Paris timezone) 

Speaker: Damie Pak has a PhD in Biology from The Pennsylvania State University, and her research has been in theoretical ecology with a fondness for agricultural insects and infectious disease. She uses R for everything—from statistical analyses to mathematical modeling.

Description: While R is best known as a tool for statistical analyses, it can also be used for mathematical simulations. Specifically, we can use compartmental modeling—a mathematical framework for capturing individuals transitioning between different stages—to investigate dynamics found in nature. Notably, we will use the package {deSolve} to model the Lotka-Volterra predator-prey model to showcase the diversity of dynamics that can be observed from a remarkably simple system of equations. The workshop will cover the basic mathematics, the structure of writing a differential equation model in R, as well as ways to visualize the output for better insight using {ggplot} and {gganimate}.

Minimal registration fee: 20 euro (or 20 USD or 800 UAH)




Please note that the registration confirmation is sent 1 day before the workshop to all registered participants rather than immediately after registration


How can I register?



  • Save your donation receipt (after the donation is processed, there is an option to enter your email address on the website to which the donation receipt is sent)

  • Fill in the registration form, attaching a screenshot of a donation receipt (please attach the screenshot of the donation receipt that was emailed to you rather than the page you see after donation).

If you are not personally interested in attending, you can also contribute by sponsoring a participation of a student, who will then be able to participate for free. If you choose to sponsor a student, all proceeds will also go directly to organisations working in Ukraine. You can either sponsor a particular student or you can leave it up to us so that we can allocate the sponsored place to students who have signed up for the waiting list.


How can I sponsor a student?


  • Save your donation receipt (after the donation is processed, there is an option to enter your email address on the website to which the donation receipt is sent)

  • Fill in the sponsorship form, attaching the screenshot of the donation receipt (please attach the screenshot of the donation receipt that was emailed to you rather than the page you see after the donation). You can indicate whether you want to sponsor a particular student or we can allocate this spot ourselves to the students from the waiting list. You can also indicate whether you prefer us to prioritize students from developing countries when assigning place(s) that you sponsored.


If you are a university student and cannot afford the registration fee, you can also sign up for the waiting list here. (Note that you are not guaranteed to participate by signing up for the waiting list).



You can also find more information about this workshop series,  a schedule of our future workshops as well as a list of our past workshops which you can get the recordings & materials here.


Looking forward to seeing you during the workshop!










 










Building and Customising Statistical Models with Stan and R: An Introduction to Bayesian Inference workshop

Join our workshop on Building and Customising Statistical Models with Stan and R: An Introduction to Bayesian Inference, which is a part of our workshops for Ukraine series! 


Here’s some more info: 


Title: Building and Customising Statistical Models with Stan and R: An Introduction to Bayesian Inference

Date: Thursday, November 13th, 18:00 – 20:00 CEST (Rome, Berlin, Paris timezone) 

Speaker: Matteo Lisi is a Lecturer (assistant professor) in the Department of Psychology at Royal Holloway, University of London. His research uses experimental methods and computational modelling to study how people represent and use information about uncertainty when making decisions. He teaches statistics and data analysis with a focus on making modelling concepts practical and transparent. Matteo is co-author of Statistics for Psychology Using R: A Linear Models Perspective (Open University Press / McGraw-Hill, 2025), an accessible, modern introduction to statistical modelling in R. More info at mlisi.xyz 

Description: Bayesian modelling offers a powerful way to understand data — but getting started can feel daunting. This workshop provides a practical introduction to Bayesian inference using Stan and R, aimed at researchers who are ready to move beyond standard statistical packages.

We’ll start from familiar ground with generalised linear models, and then work through a series of worked examples showing how Stan’s flexibility allows you to build and adapt models for more specialised applications. One of the key advantages of coding your models directly into Stan language is that it lets you build the model you want, instead of being limited to a predefined set of options.

The session aims to provide you with hands-on experience specifying, fitting, and interpreting Bayesian models in Stan, and a clear sense of how to extend these methods to your own data. No prior experience with Bayesian analysis or Stan is required, though familiarity with R and regression modelling will be helpful.

Minimal registration fee: 20 euro (or 20 USD or 800 UAH)




Please note that the registration confirmation is sent 1 day before the workshop to all registered participants rather than immediately after registration


How can I register?



  • Save your donation receipt (after the donation is processed, there is an option to enter your email address on the website to which the donation receipt is sent)

  • Fill in the registration form, attaching a screenshot of a donation receipt (please attach the screenshot of the donation receipt that was emailed to you rather than the page you see after donation).

If you are not personally interested in attending, you can also contribute by sponsoring a participation of a student, who will then be able to participate for free. If you choose to sponsor a student, all proceeds will also go directly to organisations working in Ukraine. You can either sponsor a particular student or you can leave it up to us so that we can allocate the sponsored place to students who have signed up for the waiting list.


How can I sponsor a student?


  • Save your donation receipt (after the donation is processed, there is an option to enter your email address on the website to which the donation receipt is sent)

  • Fill in the sponsorship form, attaching the screenshot of the donation receipt (please attach the screenshot of the donation receipt that was emailed to you rather than the page you see after the donation). You can indicate whether you want to sponsor a particular student or we can allocate this spot ourselves to the students from the waiting list. You can also indicate whether you prefer us to prioritize students from developing countries when assigning place(s) that you sponsored.


If you are a university student and cannot afford the registration fee, you can also sign up for the waiting list here. (Note that you are not guaranteed to participate by signing up for the waiting list).



You can also find more information about this workshop series,  a schedule of our future workshops as well as a list of our past workshops which you can get the recordings & materials here.


Looking forward to seeing you during the workshop!










 









Linear algebra using Armadillo via armadillo4r workshop

Join our workshop on Linear algebra using Armadillo via armadillo4r , which is a part of our workshops for Ukraine series! 


Here’s some more info: 


Title: Linear algebra using Armadillo via armadillo4r 


Date: Thursday, November 6th, 18:00 – 20:00 CEST (Rome, Berlin, Paris timezone) 


Speaker: Mauricio ‘Pachá’ Vargas Sepúlveda has a Master of Arts in Political Science from the University of Toronto, a Master of Science in Statistics from the Catholic University of Chile, and an Engineering degree from the University of Chile. Now he is doing a PhD in Economics at the University of Surrey.


Description: This workshop consists in a quick review of linear algebra that we will use to write a naive Ordinary Least Squares estimation function to find the best line to describe the relation between two continuous variables X and Y. The goal is that the participants can write their own R package with C++ code using armadillo4r. We will cover the essentials of R packages design and linear algebra using the Armadillo C++ library.


Minimal registration fee: 20 euro (or 20 USD or 800 UAH)




Please note that the registration confirmation is sent 1 day before the workshop to all registered participants rather than immediately after registration


How can I register?



  • Save your donation receipt (after the donation is processed, there is an option to enter your email address on the website to which the donation receipt is sent)

  • Fill in the registration form, attaching a screenshot of a donation receipt (please attach the screenshot of the donation receipt that was emailed to you rather than the page you see after donation).

If you are not personally interested in attending, you can also contribute by sponsoring a participation of a student, who will then be able to participate for free. If you choose to sponsor a student, all proceeds will also go directly to organisations working in Ukraine. You can either sponsor a particular student or you can leave it up to us so that we can allocate the sponsored place to students who have signed up for the waiting list.


How can I sponsor a student?


  • Save your donation receipt (after the donation is processed, there is an option to enter your email address on the website to which the donation receipt is sent)

  • Fill in the sponsorship form, attaching the screenshot of the donation receipt (please attach the screenshot of the donation receipt that was emailed to you rather than the page you see after the donation). You can indicate whether you want to sponsor a particular student or we can allocate this spot ourselves to the students from the waiting list. You can also indicate whether you prefer us to prioritize students from developing countries when assigning place(s) that you sponsored.


If you are a university student and cannot afford the registration fee, you can also sign up for the waiting list here. (Note that you are not guaranteed to participate by signing up for the waiting list).



You can also find more information about this workshop series,  a schedule of our future workshops as well as a list of our past workshops which you can get the recordings & materials here.


Looking forward to seeing you during the workshop!










 









Bayesian Optimization for Sequential Decisions with Multi-Arm Bandits

Join our workshop titled Bayesian Optimization for Sequential Decisions with Multi-Arm Bandits, which is a part of our workshops for Ukraine series! 


Here’s some more info: 



Title: Bayesian Optimization for Sequential Decisions with Multi-Arm Bandits

Date: Thursday, October 23rd, 18:00 – 20:00 CEST (Rome, Berlin, Paris timezone)

Speaker: Jordan Nafa is a Data Scientist and Bayesian Statistician who has previously worked at Game Data Pros, where he designed and built production systems for Bayesian optimization and experimentation in major mobile and console games. He was previously a PhD Candidate in Political Science at the University of North Texas, where he taught undergraduate courses in causal inference, statistics, and American political behavior.

Description: This workshop introduces Bayesian optimization and multi-armed bandits. It covers sequential decision problems, Thompson Sampling, and multi-arm bandits. The workshop is designed for those with a basic understanding of traditional experimental design and analysis approaches, such as those commonly applied in A/B testing, who want to learn about Bayesian methods for sequential decision-making. The workshop includes practical examples of implementing multi-arm bandit algorithms and their generalizations in R and Python using Stan and PyMC.

Minimal registration fee: 20 euro (or 20 USD or 800 UAH)








Please note that the registration confirmation is sent 1 day before the workshop to all registered participants rather than immediately after registration


How can I register?



  • Save your donation receipt (after the donation is processed, there is an option to enter your email address on the website to which the donation receipt is sent)

  • Fill in the registration form, attaching a screenshot of a donation receipt (please attach the screenshot of the donation receipt that was emailed to you rather than the page you see after donation).

If you are not personally interested in attending, you can also contribute by sponsoring a participation of a student, who will then be able to participate for free. If you choose to sponsor a student, all proceeds will also go directly to organisations working in Ukraine. You can either sponsor a particular student or you can leave it up to us so that we can allocate the sponsored place to students who have signed up for the waiting list.


How can I sponsor a student?


  • Save your donation receipt (after the donation is processed, there is an option to enter your email address on the website to which the donation receipt is sent)

  • Fill in the sponsorship form, attaching the screenshot of the donation receipt (please attach the screenshot of the donation receipt that was emailed to you rather than the page you see after the donation). You can indicate whether you want to sponsor a particular student or we can allocate this spot ourselves to the students from the waiting list. You can also indicate whether you prefer us to prioritize students from developing countries when assigning place(s) that you sponsored.


If you are a university student and cannot afford the registration fee, you can also sign up for the waiting list here. (Note that you are not guaranteed to participate by signing up for the waiting list).



You can also find more information about this workshop series,  a schedule of our future workshops as well as a list of our past workshops which you can get the recordings & materials here.


Looking forward to seeing you during the workshop!










 










Structural Bayesian Techniques for Experimental and Behavioral Economics, With applications in R and Stan workshop

Join our workshop on Structural Bayesian Techniques for Experimental and Behavioral Economics, With applications in R and Stan, which is a part of our workshops for Ukraine series! 


Here’s some more info: 


Title: Structural Bayesian Techniques for Experimental and Behavioral Economics, With applications in R and Stan


Date: Thursday, October 16th, 18:00 – 20:00 CEST (Rome, Berlin, Paris timezone)


Speaker: James Bland (ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0002-7117-9998) is an Associate Professor at the University of Toledo (USA). His research interests are at the intersection experimental economics and econometrics, and are especially focused on applied Bayesian econometrics. His free online book “Structural Bayesian Techniques for Experimental and Behavioral Economics, With applications in R and Stan” (https://jamesblandecon.github.io/StructuralBayesianTechniques/section.html) is a practical guide to doing these things, and covers many techniques that he and others have developed in this field.


Description: If you have an economic model, then in principle you can estimate its parameters using structural techniques. In experimental and behavioral economics these models typically describe how people make decisions, describing phenomena such as distributional preferences, risk-aversion, time preferences, levels of strategic thinking, and strategies used by players in games. Bayesian techniques lend themselves especially well to estimating these models for at least three reasons. Firstly, hierarchical Bayesian modeling handles well the heterogeneity we can expect there to be between participants in economic experiments. Secondly, when doing structural estimation, we are often interested in reporting transformations of our model’s parameters, and this is very easy to implement in the Bayesian framework. Finally, recent developments in the software for estimating Bayesian models have made doing this easier and less computationally taxing. 


This workshop will introduce you to structural modelling of data from economic experiments. We will use data from real economic experiments to estimate these models using Stan. Stan is a free probabilistic programming language, and is usable within R with the library RStan. Using a model of other-regarding preferences as an example, we will learn about how to build a full probabilistic model from an economic model that makes deterministic predictions. We will then build into this model some plausible between-participant heterogeneity. Finally, we will use our model to make an out-of-sample prediction.


Minimal registration fee: 20 euro (or 20 USD or 800 UAH)


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Please note that the registration confirmation is sent 1 day before the workshop to all registered participants rather than immediately after registration


How can I register?



  • Save your donation receipt (after the donation is processed, there is an option to enter your email address on the website to which the donation receipt is sent)

  • Fill in the registration form, attaching a screenshot of a donation receipt (please attach the screenshot of the donation receipt that was emailed to you rather than the page you see after donation).

If you are not personally interested in attending, you can also contribute by sponsoring a participation of a student, who will then be able to participate for free. If you choose to sponsor a student, all proceeds will also go directly to organisations working in Ukraine. You can either sponsor a particular student or you can leave it up to us so that we can allocate the sponsored place to students who have signed up for the waiting list.


How can I sponsor a student?


  • Save your donation receipt (after the donation is processed, there is an option to enter your email address on the website to which the donation receipt is sent)

  • Fill in the sponsorship form, attaching the screenshot of the donation receipt (please attach the screenshot of the donation receipt that was emailed to you rather than the page you see after the donation). You can indicate whether you want to sponsor a particular student or we can allocate this spot ourselves to the students from the waiting list. You can also indicate whether you prefer us to prioritize students from developing countries when assigning place(s) that you sponsored.


If you are a university student and cannot afford the registration fee, you can also sign up for the waiting list here. (Note that you are not guaranteed to participate by signing up for the waiting list).



You can also find more information about this workshop series,  a schedule of our future workshops as well as a list of our past workshops which you can get the recordings & materials here.


Looking forward to seeing you during the workshop!