目次

Introduction: Benefits and challenges of the panel design.- Outline of the book.- Audience and prerequisites.- Acknowledgements.- Managing panel data: The nature of panel data.- The basics of panel data management.- Three case studies on poverty in Germany.- How to represent a population with panel data?- Conclusion and further reading.- Describing and modeling panel data: Some basic terminology.- Measurements over time are not independent.- Describing the dependent variable.-  Explaining the dependent variable over time: typical explanatory variables.- Modeling panel data.-  Estimating models for panel data.- Overview of subsequent chapters.- Panel analysis of continuous variables: Modeling the level of Y.- Modeling the change of Y.-  Conclusion and further reading.-  Panel analysis of categorical variables: Modeling the level of Y: Discrete response models for panel data.- Modeling the change of Y: Discrete-time event history models for panel data.- Conclusion and further reading.- Conclusion: How to do your own panel analysis.-  A: Functions of random variables.- B: Estimation and testing:  Ordinary least squares.- How to compute a regression model fitting the data?- Sampling and sampling errors.- How to choose between different estimation methods?- How to estimate the parameters of an unknown population with a sample of data?- How to test parameters of an unknown population with a sample of data?- Maximum likelihood .- C: Web site of the textbook.- Bibliography.- Index.