Welcome to the empirical economic lab manual. This repository serves as a living handbook for research assistants (RAs) working in computational and empirical social sciences. It distills best practices for reproducible research, coding standards across multiple languages, and workflow organization so that every project can be replicated and extended with confidence.
The goal is to get you up and running quickly for empirical projects, especially for working on my teams and others.
This is a distant fork of other lab manuals.
- Fundamentals – Core principles of reproducible research applicable to any language or project.
- Language-Specific Guides
- Workflows – Project organization patterns, dependency management, and automation.
- Templates – Ready-to-use code templates you can copy into your own projects.
- Examples – Minimal example projects that demonstrate the practices in action.
- Best Practices Checklist – Quick reference before you start, run, share, or publish research.
- Coding Style Guide – Conventions for all languages.
- Python Reproducibility – Managing environments and data workflows.
- Stata Quick-Start – Using VS Code and Conda.
- Clone the repository
git clone https://github.com/<your-org>/empirical-econ-lab-manual.git cd empirical-econ-lab-manual
- Browse the Fundamentals to understand reproducible research foundations.
- Dive into the language guide that matches your stack.
- Copy a template from
/templates/to bootstrap your analysis. - Use the checklists to make sure your work is reproducible before sharing.
We welcome improvements! If you spot an issue or have an enhancement:
- Fork the repository and create a feature branch.
- Commit using conventional present-tense messages (e.g.,
Add Stata logging example). - Open a Pull Request describing your change.
See the GitHub Essentials guide for more.
Distributed under the MIT License. See LICENSE for details.
*Maintained with ♥ by Nathan Lane and Industrial Policy Group