ECON 448: Comparative Economic Development

University of Washington | Autumn 2025 Author: Ching-Wei (Alex) Lin

This repository contains the complete coursework and final research project for ECON 448. The work focuses on quantitative economic analysis using R, specifically investigating development patterns in Latin America.

Final Research Project

Title: Marriage, Employment, and Earnings in Mexico and Brazil

• Objective: This research explores how marital status relates to women’s employment and income in Brazil and Mexico during the late 20th century (1990/1991 and 2000).
• Key Findings: The study investigates whether labor patterns are universal or context-specific, framed through the lens of household specialization and economic development.

Coursework Contents

• Problem Sets 1-4: A series of econometrics and data analysis assignments focused on comparative development indicators.

Data Sources

The primary datasets used in this project and coursework are sourced from IPUMS (Integrated Public Use Microdata Series).

• IPUMS Website: https://www.ipums.org/

Note on Data Privacy: To comply with GitHub file size limits and data provider terms, raw data files (including .csv and .gz formats) are excluded from this repository via .gitignore. The code provided includes the necessary steps to process these files once they are acquired from the original source.