Date/Time
Date(s) - 15/05/2025 9:30 am - 4:00 pm
Audience:
Machine Learning for Economics, Finance & Management
Online workshop with Professor Sourafel Girma
Thursday 15th May 2025 (09.30-16.00 with regular breaks)
The emergence of big data is posing exciting challenges and opportunities to businesses and researchers alike. Machine learning tools are at the heart of big data analysis and are becoming indispensable for a more nuance understanding of the working of the economy and informed decision making.
Machine learning algorithms can deal with Big Data that are characterised by large volume, high dimension, and complex structures such as unstructured data (texts, web-search queries and pictures that measure some sort of economic activity). This requires the acquisition of advanced programming and computational skills.
In contrast to traditional econometric techniques, machine learning algorithms make systematic model comparisons and attempt at learning from different models at the same time, leading to concepts such as model averaging and ensemble method.
The workshop provides a brief introduction to machine learning, with a particular focus on supervised learning techniques for regression problems. Participants will gain hands-on experience with Python, using popular libraries such as scikit-learn and pandas to implement machine learning models.
What You’ll Learn:
🔹 Regularization & Parameter Tuning – Improve model accuracy and interpretability with Lasso, Ridge, and Elastic Net.
🔹 Decision Trees & Random Forests – Leverage ensemble methods for robust economic and financial predictions.
🔹 Gradient Boosting Machines (GBM) – Harness the power of boosting algorithms
🔹 Doubly Debiased Machine Learning (DML) – Apply causal ML techniques for rigorous policy evaluation and treatment effect estimation
Why Attend?
🔹 Empirical Focus – Designed for researchers working with real-world economic and financial datasets.
🔹 Hands-on Python Training – Learn practical implementation using popular libraries such as scikit-learn, and DDML
🔹 Cutting-Edge Methods – Stay ahead with the latest ML techniques used in top-tier research.