Customer Reviews

A Guide to Econometrics

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Throughout the 1970's, big-name sociologists with impeccable methodological and statistical credentials sought to persuade the discipline's journeymen that they should learn econometrics. The two most influential proponents of this view were the social statistics luminaries Hubert Blalock and Otis Dudley Duncan. Blalock was more optimistic than Duncan with regard to the ultimate payoff, but Duncan was more arrogantly dismissive of those who failed to heed his admonition.

In response, sociology and related social science journals became much more densely quantitative. Many social scientists, as a result, felt as if they had been reduced to obslescence. After all, econometrics and the other new quantitative tools, especially path analysis, which had come to dominate the discipline were difficult topics under the best of circumstances, and most social scientists lacked the mathematical training to tackle the best known econometrics texts, such as those by Jack Johnston, Jan Kmenta, and Arthur Goldberger. Many social scientists had been introduced to the econometrics mainstay, regression analysis, but not in this highly technical form.

Fortunately, the decade of the '70's also saw publication of Damodar Gujarati's introductory econometrics text, as well as the first edition of Peter Kennedy's Guide to Econometrics. Gujarati's book presented much the same material as his more insistently mathematical colleagues, but in a much more accessible form. His book could actually be used for self-instructional purposes, enabling less methodologically astute social scientists to finally figure out what was going on.

Kennedy's book was a forest-for-the-trees antidote to the mathematically dense and detailed texts, a book that enabled social scientists and other readers to identify topics that were of central importance and those that were ancillary details.

As with Gujarati, Kennedy wrote in accessible language and provided motivated readers with an overview of econometrics, enabling them to see what all the fuss was about. By including general notes and technical notes at the end of each chapter, Kennedy assured that his book was of value not not only to those of us who were less mathematically favored, but to those for whom use of econometrics was an everyday activity, one they had pretty well mastered.

In additon, while the first edition of Kennedy's book ran 175 pages, the most recent (sixth) edition is a full 575 pages. This reflects the fact that, while the book continues to provide an accessible overview of econometrics, it is also a comprehensive catalogue of regression analysis correctives. Kennedy explicitly acknowledges that his objective is to compile an accessible repository of the rapidly growing list of tests and procedures available to make regression analysis more generally applicable and informative. Anyone interested in the history of econometrics over the past thirty years would do well to begin with Kenndy's book.

Even for those of us for whom this stuff does not come easily, Kennedy's text is an invaluable reference. For the newcomer, it remains a fine overview of econometrics and a useful adjunct to any basic text. When the seventh edition comes out, it will be interesing to see what Kennedy makes of the near-obsessive concern with instrumental variable methods of causal analysis as presented, for example, in Angrist and Pischke's Mostly Harmless Econometrics.

This is a great book. But buy it for the right reason. All by itself, not as useful as a lot of the reviews suggests.

This has to be used together with Greene's <<Econometric Analysis>>. It suppliment a lot of the formulae with ideas and reasons. But it is light on formula by itself, and you can not use it as a reference. This is a explain book, tells you why we should do it this way, what to caution/watch for, what is the logic behind that.

So buy it with greene's book. Learn the math in greene's book, keep greene's book on the shelf as regular reference book. But read this book to understand ideas, and sort out complexicities.

Overall, still a great buy.

I'm a college student and recently got accepted in a master's degree in Economics. One of the problems I had regarding books about Econometrics is the lack of mathematical and economic concept discussions. Most of them are merely mathematical proofs without any clear explanation. On the other hand, this book discusses WHY econometricians need to watch out for violations of assumptions in the linear regressions, how to detect them, and finally, how to solve them. If you want mathematical proofs I suggest you pick another book but if you really want to understand the inner workings in Econometrics, buy this book. It saved me a lot of time and headaches.

This book must be mandatory before and during any econometrics class. In intuitive terms and examples, with minimal notation and math, manages to deliver a working knowledge, a basic understanding that can supplement and aid in the use of the usual undergraduate and graduate econometrics books like Green and others.

What is exactly opposite of these other books is that you can really enjoy reading this book while drinking your coffee, or lying on the sand enjoying the beach. I recommend this book in my syllabus to all my students in all graduate and undergraduate courses I teach.

I should have book earlier versions of this book. Kennedy's A Guide to Econometrics has been recommended to me by a few people for a few years now, but I only got myself a copy last year (2008) when the 6th edition came out. The author does a wonderful job explaining a lot of the econometrics concepts that may have been missed by standard econometrics texts. The reason may be that the format of the book is geared towards the practical application of econometrics and what the student would expect to encounter. Moreover, Kennedy sometimes has a "what people usually do" and "why that is wrong" type of discussion. Those are pretty helpful.

I think this should probably be a second text or a supplementary text to a more formal econometrics textbook, such as Greene or Hayashi for more advanced students or Gujarati or Maddala for undergraduates. In retrospect, I probably would have grasped a lot of the concepts sooner had I read Kennedy early on. As it stands now, I still benefitted quite a bit from reading Kennedy's text and it was a much easier read given that I didn't have to focus on any of the mathematical derivations as they are not new to me anymore.

This text is a good compliment to any econometrics text. Kennedy summarizes (in bullet points) the methods of econometrics with intuitive explanations. The author also references some of the major articles where these techniques originate from for those looking for an in depth proof and more information.

I am happy with what I purchased recently. Both the timing and the book's quality were excellent. Thank you very much.

This book is very good at approaching the fundamentals of econometrics. I use it as a reference to supplement the general concepts that I learn in the classroom. Great buy to help you do better in an econometrics class.

Unfortunately, I didn't buy this book until AFTER suffering through Econometrics 1, but it did save my life for econometrics 2. As other reviewers have said - buy this book and read it BEFORE you read the same topic in Greene, Wooldridge, Verbeek etc. I describe this book as the one I read on the front porch with a cup of coffee. What was the last statistics book you could enjoy like that (AND still learn something). Some reviews say that this book is superficial - not really. Kennedy specifically cites reference texts where you can go for further details. I actually find his book more insightful, and it was the reason I could understand the equations, rather than superficially memorizing them. He tells you what the inverse mills ratio does in a Tobit model, rather than just writing out it's Greek letters and assuming you are such a calculus wiz that you will know what it does.

A Guide to Econometrics is the book I dreamed about as an undergrad and first year grad student. The actual chapter content is simple enough to never distract from the intuition behind the subject matter. As a result of this simplicity and good writing, the chapters read more like those out of a book than a text. Because of it's accessibility, the text helped me take my understanding of econometrics out its compartmentalized form and turn it into a more holistic understanding of how all the pieces fit together. While somewhat succinct, the technical notes are very helpful in understanding some of the action behind the intuition. When that hasn't been enough, I have found the general notes quite useful in locating appropriate references.
While it is not a stand alone text, no other book has whet my appetite for understanding econometrics like the Guide.