An examination of why cities and regions grow or fail to grow, and what, if anything, state and local policymakers can do to facilitate economic growth. Course focuses on major theoretical approaches to understanding regional competitiveness and the nature and efficacy of common policy approaches adopted by state and local governments to promote economic development in cities and regions.

Understanding and applying major statistical tools associated with public policy. Focus is on quantitative methods of policy model building. Includes the following statistical analysis techniques: descriptive statistics, normality, non­parametric statistics, linear and non-linear multiple regression, time series and panel analysis. The goal is to develop the student's capacity to statistically examine a policy question.
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Graduate level introduction to the principles of applied social science research. Reviews the methodological issues facing scholars and policy analysts as they seek to inform evidence based policymaking through empirical research. Students are exposed to social science research methods and apply them to critically evaluate policy research by designing and proposing an original empirical research project.
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Developing a public policy research proposal. As a capstone completion course, students collect, analyze, and interpret data results based on a self-determined research question acceptable to the course instructor. The goal of the course is to apply the methodological and statistical techniques developed in earlier courses and prepare a policy analysis product.
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