Kay Hayward and Christine Vogel (Producers), America and the World Economy.

This lesson is designed to give students in a wide variety of undergraduate classes the opportunity to identify the problems inherent in analyzing imperfect data. Students are asked to analyze data, which the authors provide, from the Professional Golfers’ Association Tour to ponder the link between golfers’ skills in different facets of the game and their relative performances in certain tournaments. Selection issues are inherent in the data because of Tour policies regarding golfers’ tournament entry decisions. By the end of the lesson, students should better understand the importance of gaining institutional knowledge to improve the results of a study. Students are asked to mitigate the selection bias with the Heckman two-step procedure, a tool used in studies of labor, insurance, and education markets.