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This textbook provides future data analysts with the tools, methods, and skills needed to answer data-focused, real-life questions; to carry out data analysis; and to visualize and interpret results to support better decisions in business, economics, and public policy. Data wrangling and exploration, regression analysis, machine learning, and causal analysis are comprehensively covered, as well as when, why, and how the methods work, and how they relate to each other. As the most effective way to communicate data analysis, running case studies play a central role in this textbook. Each case starts with an industry-relevant question and answers it by using real-world data and applying the tools and methods covered in the textbook. Learning is then consolidated by 360 practice questions and 120 data exercises. Extensive online resources, including raw and cleaned data and codes for all analysis in Stata, R, and Python, can be found at www.gabors-data-analysis.com.

Equips future data analysts with the skills they need to answer questions in business, economics, and public policy. Covering methods of exploratory, predictive, and causal analysis, it includes case studies that use real-world data and related data exercises supported by code (Stata, R, Python) and data available online.

AbstractUsing unique data from Hungary, the gap in reading and mathematics test scores between Roma and non‐Roma 8th grade students is assessed and a substantial gap between them revealed. Standardized test scores as well as the fraction of students with competences considered inadequate are examined. Regardless of measurement and subject area, the bulk of the gap is explained by social differences in income, wealth and parental education. Using reduced‐form regressions, two major mediating mechanisms are identified: first, on average the home environment of Roma children is less favourable for cognitive development; second, the educational environment of the average Roma student is different from the average non‐Roma student. Comparing students with similar home environments from the same school and class, the ethnic gap in test scores is found to be insignificant. Ethnic differences in the home environment are explained by social disparity, and ethnicity seems to play no additional role in that regard. The unequal distribution of Roma students in schools and classes is found to be explained predominantly by social difference, too, with a significant residual portion, indicating the effect of ethnic segregation.

This paper documents and decomposes the test score gap between Roma and non-Roma 8th graders in Hungary in 2006. Our data connect national standardized test scores to an individual panel survey with detailed data on ethnicity and family background. The test score gap is approximately one standard deviation for both reading and mathematics, which is similar to the gap between African-American and White students of the same age group in the US in the 1980s. After accounting for on health, parenting, school fixed effects and family background, the gap disappears in reading and drops to 0.15 standard deviation in mathematics.

This study estimates the expected long-term budgetary benefits to investing into Roma education in Hungary. By budgetary benefits we mean the direct financial benefits to the national budget. The main idea is that investing extra public money into Roma education would pay off even in fiscal terms. In order to be successful, investments should take place in early childhood. Successful investments are also expensive. But if it is done the right way, such investments more than recoup their costs in terms of extra tax benefits in the future. This study looks at the expected budgetary benefits of a successful investment. It does no deal with how to achieve success. The motivating idea behind our analysis is the notion that investing into somebody's education will lead to benefits not only to the person in question but also to the whole society. We consider these social benefits in a very narrow sense: we make use the fact that in a typical modern society, more education makes people contribute more to the national budget and/or receive less transfers from it. The increased contributions and decreased transfers make up the net budgetary benefits. Net budgetary benefits measure a return on investments into education, very much like returns on any other financial investment. If expected returns more than compensate for such investments, it is in the very narrow interest of the government to invest into Roma education, even setting aside other consideration. We estimate the net benefit of an extra investment (on top of existing pre-school and primary school financing) that enables a young Roma to successfully complete secondary school. We consider an investment that takes place (starts at) at age 4, i.e. we calculate the long-term benefits discounted to age 4. We estimate returns to an investment that makes Roma children complete the maturity examination ("erettsegi") and opens the road to college, instead of stopping at 8 grades of primary school (or dropping out of secondary school). We consider seven channels: personal income tax on income earned from registered fulltime employment, social security contributions paid by employers and employees on earned income, unemployment benefits, means-tested welfare benefits, earning from public employment projects, value added and excise tax on consumption, and incarceration costs. We adjust our estimates by the extra costs of increased secondary and college education. We use large sample surveys, aggregate administrative data, and tax and contribution rules to estimate the necessary parameters. The analysis is nonexperimental and is based on national estimates adjusted for Roma differences. The lack of detailed Roma data and lack of experimental evidence makes interpretation somewhat problematic. We therefore carry out extensive robustness checks for analyzing alternative assumptions. One should keep in mind that, for lack of appropriate data, we leave out important channels such as old-age pensions, disability pensions, childcare benefits, and health care costs. Including most of these channels would most likely increase the estimated benefits to educational investments. Our estimates are therefore most likely lower bounds for the expected budgetary benefits. The results indicate that an investment that makes one young Roma successfully complete secondary school would yield significant direct long-term benefits to the national budget. According to our benchmark estimate, discounted to age 4 (a possible starting age for such an investment), the present value of the future benefits is about HUF 19M (EUR 70,000) relative to the value the government would collect on the representative person in case if she had not continued her studies after the primary school. The benefits are somewhat smaller if (without the suggested early childhood educational investment), the young Roma person finished vocational training school (HUF 15M, EUR 55,000). The estimated returns are sensitive to the discount rate, the assumed wage growth, the college completion rate after secondary school, and the race specific employment and wage differentials (to some extent due to labor market discrimination). But even our most conservative estimates suggest that benefits are least HUF 7M - 9M. We formulate all results in terms of the benefits of an investment that makes one child successfully complete secondary school, for methodological convenience. Naturally, no investment is certain to bring such a result. When comparing benefits to costs, one has to factor in the success probabilities. For example, if an investment increases the chance of secondary school completion by 20 percentage points, i.e. one child out of five gets there as a result of the investment, benchmark benefits relative to 8 grades are HUF 3.8M (19M/5). In other words, 3.8M per child investment would therefore break even with a 20% success rate. Even by looking at our most conservative estimates, any investment with such a success rate is almost sure to yield a positive return if costs are HUF 1.8M or less per child. Overwhelmingly, the benefits would come from increased government revenues, from personal income tax and employer/employee contributions after earned income. Savings on unemployment insurance, welfare benefits and public employment projects are negligible, and savings on incarceration costs are also small. Larger value added tax benefits on consumption are also sizable.

Abstract
This study examines friendship and hostility relations between Roma students and the ethnically homogeneous non-Roma majority in Hungarian schools. Using data on friendship and hostility relations of 15-year-old students from 82 schools, the study focuses on the interaction between exposure to the other ethnic group and academic achievement of Roma students. High-achieving Roma students are shown to have significantly more friends and fewer adversaries than low-achieving ones, due to better inter-ethnic relations while having similar within-ethnic group relations. As a result, higher exposure to Roma students translates to more friendship and less hostility from non-Roma students in environments where more of the Roma students have higher achievement. Therefore, policies helping the achievement of Roma students can have immediate as well as long-term positive effects. Simulations suggest that a mixed policy of desegregation and closing the achievement gap may best foster positive inter-ethnic relations.

We report the results of an intervention that targeted anti-Roma sentiment in Hungary using an online perspective-taking game. We evaluated the impact of this intervention using a randomized experiment in which a sample of young adults played this perspective-taking game, or an unrelated online game. Participation in the perspective-taking game markedly reduced prejudice, with an effect-size equivalent to half the difference between voters of the far-right and the center-right party. The effects persisted for at least a month, and, as a byproduct, the intervention also reduced antipathy toward refugees, another stigmatized group in Hungary, and decreased vote intentions for Hungary's overtly racist, far-right party by 10%. Our study offers a proof-of-concept for a general class of interventions that could be adapted to different settings and implemented at low costs.

Longitudinal surveys traditionally conducted by interviewers are facing increasing pressures to explore alternatives such as sequential mixed-mode designs, which start with a cheaper self-administered mode (online) then follow up using more expensive methods such as telephone or face-to-face interviewing. Using a designed experiment conducted as part of the 2018 wave of the Health and Retirement Study (HRS) in the US, we compare a sequential mixed-mode design (web then telephone) with the standard telephone-only protocol. Using an intent-to-treat analysis, we focus on response quality and response distributions for several domains key to HRS: physical and psychological health, financial status, expectations and family composition.
Respondents assigned to the sequential mixed-mode (web) had slightly higher missing data rates and more focal responses than those assigned to telephone-only. However, we find no evidence of differential quality in verifying and updating roster information. We find slightly lower rates of asset ownership reported by those assigned to the web mode. Conditional on ownership, we find no detectable mode effects on the value of assets. We find more negative (pessimistic) expectations for those assigned to the web mode. We find little evidence of poorer health reported by those assigned to the web mode.
We find that effects of mode assignment on measurement are present, but for most indicators the effects are small. Finding ways to remediate the differences in item-missing data and focal values should help reduce mode effects in mixed-mode surveys or those transitioning from interviewer- to self-administration.