Christian Ochsner, Ph.D.

Did you know that men who shave their beards every day live longer? This statement is true in terms of correlation, but there is no causal relationship at all. In fact, empirical research in economics and social sciences faces the challenge of distinguishing correlation from causation. The course introduces concepts of causal analysis in a non-technical way. These concepts were awarded the 2021 Nobel Prize in Economics. The focus will be on research settings and designs. Figures and graphs will help to train students to understand the intuition behind the respective concepts. We will read and understand research papers in the field of long-run development and political economy that focus on specific concepts of causal empirical analysis.

Silvester van Koten, Ph.D.

Energy is a basic necessity of daily life and a vital input to industry in any society. New technologies, especially renewable power generators, such as wind and solar, are changing the industry. Also, new climate policies have a growing influence on the economics and practical functioning of energy systems, especially the electricity industry.

First, this course gives a brief overview of the present and expected future state of global warming and its economic consequences. Second, this course gives a deep theoretical insight regarding economic externalities, such as global warming. Several classical economic instruments are presented, such as Pigovean taxes, cap-and-trade programs, subsidies, and mandates. The theory addressed has broad applications, including in the field of public finance and public policy. Third, this course gives an overview of the economics of new potential decarbonization technologies, such as hydrogen, heat pumps, electric cars, and gas as a transition fuel.

Andreas Menzel, Ph.D

The goal of this course is to expose students to the newest developments in applied microeconomic research in development economics, particularly policy-oriented research. The topics covered will be especially close to the research agenda of the recent Nobel Prize Winners in Economics: Abhijit Banerjee, Esther Duflo, and Michael Kremer. A further focus of the course is on the study of infrastructure, firms and labor markets in developing countries. Overall, the course offers a thorough understanding of current-day research in development, with a special angle on poverty reduction and private market policies. The goal is to enable students to identify promising research questions in these fields (e.g. for future studies), and to help students prepare for a career as a practitioner in government and non-government development organizations.

Gabriela Kuvíková, Ph.D.

This course aims to provide a basic understanding of today’s changing landscape of financial markets and institutions with a broad scope and emphasis on general principles. Students will study the key fundamentals of financial markets and learn how financial markets and financial institutions work. We will discuss interest rates and their role in valuation, learn about efficient market hypothesis and exchange rate determination, explore money and capital markets, identify various players in the financial institutions industry, and take a closer look at central banking and the conduct of monetary policy.

Eva Hromadkova, Ph.D.

This course provides an introduction to Health Economics. As such, it will cover the production and demand for healthcare, how the determinants of demand and supply affect the costs of various types of healthcare services and the individual, family, and market investments in health. The field uses the tools of microeconomics and econometrics to examine both theoretically and empirically a number of topics, including the role of health insurance, healthcare in developing countries, and risky behavior.

Aizhamal Rakhmetova, PhD candidate

The course aims to provide students with basic knowledge in the main areas of behavioral economics by focusing on the behavioral implications of theoretical models and experimental evidence in economics. The list of topics includes bounded rationality, decision-making under risk and uncertainty, preferences, intertemporal decision-making, attention and information acquisition, and other behavioral heuristics and biases. Upon successfully completing this course, students should be able to understand the conceptual framework of behavioral economics and its tools, recognize behavioral biases, and apply insights from psychology when predicting or analyzing economic decision-making.

Ella Sargsyan, Ph.D.

The course will introduce regression analysis and cover some of the most recent econometric techniques central to modern econometric practice. Successful students will gain a deeper understanding of the material discussed in other Distance Learning Program courses. They will be up to speed with Western European students at the same education level, making them more competitive in their further studies and on the labor market. At the end of this course students will understand basic econometric concepts, basic estimation methods, and methods for testing statistical hypotheses. They will be able to apply standard methods of constructing econometric models, process statistical information, obtain statistically sound conclusions, and give meaningful interpretation to the results of the estimated econometric models. In addition, students will gain real data processing skills, using econometric packages for building and estimating econometric models in R.

Pavla Vozarova, Ph.D.

The course provides an introduction into traditional and modern models of international trade, and a discussion of the determinants of trade relations between countries and the impact of these relations on economic welfare. It also explains the principle of different trade policies in light of current international trade issues. Focus is given to the analysis of data and interpretation of empirical studies.

Daniil Kashkarov, Ph.D.

The aim of this course is to acquaint students with the general ideas behind structural macroeconomic modeling and how it can be applied to better understand real-world data, whether GDP fluctuations, evolution of lifetime income, or propensity to consume out of a monetary transfer. We will cover 2-3 basic macro models focusing on economic growth, the development of income and consumption inequality over the lifetime of individuals, and the differences in behavior of poor vs. wealthy households. For each model, we will define the decision problems of agents in a model (households/firms/government), acquire basic intuition on how a model works, and then describe how a model is calibrated to real data. The discussion of each model will conclude with a debate on how it compares with the real world and what it fails to explain.