Panel Data Workshop — Fixed Effects vs Random Effects in Action

A four-round empirical-econometrics workshop set in the Costaria National Productivity Council. Participants must deliver a defensible estimate of the PNCG management-training program's productivity effect on a panel of 1,500 SMEs over 2018–2024. Across four rounds — naive pooled OLS, omitted-variable bias decomposition, fixed-effects (one-way, two-way, random) with the Hausman test, and robustness (cluster-robust SEs, parallel-trends event study, heterogeneity) — players learn that the right number is rarely the first number, that statistical precision is not causal credibility, and that the credibility-revolution framing 'best estimate under stated assumption' beats 'true causal effect'. Bilingual EN/ES.