Courses offered in the current Winter Term 2024/25

Content

Today, quantitative analysis is the primary tool of economists. The course will introduce you to the statistical software – Stata – widely used in empirical research. Participants will master data collection, building datasets, data diagnostics, regression analysis, and production of tabulated and graphical output. The course's ultimate goal is to provide the students with the knowledge and programming skills sufficient to undertake empirical research on their own (e.g., for writing their master thesis). 

The lecture part will introduce primary commands with practical examples. The tutorial part will focus on the coding exercises employing datasets from the existing empirical papers on the political economy and development economics. Both parts of the course require diligent attendance and will be followed by the exam. 

 Requirements

The course is restricted to 16 participants. The main requirement is a good knowledge of econometrics. If you are interested in participating, please send an e-mail to nikita.zakharov@vwl.uni-freiburg.de. Please attach your transcript or records so that we can see which econometrics courses you have taken so far. The deadline for application is October 1. Later enrolment is possible as long as places are available.

You do not need a STATA-license to participate as you will have access to STATA through the university.

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Content

Immigration has emerged as a highly contentious issue in contemporary Western politics, often sparking heated debates and polarizing public opinion. Our upcoming seminar examines this issue through the lens of economic analysis. Employing advanced econometric techniques, we will investigate the factors influencing migration patterns, explore the potential links between immigration and crime rates, analyze the motivations behind emigration decisions, and evaluate the effects of immigration on labor markets and technological innovation.

Join us as we evaluate common claims about migration using empirical evidence, offering a nuanced, data-driven perspective on one of today's most discussed topics.

 Requirements

As the literature is mostly empirical, the seminar requires the knowledge of econometrics to the extent taught in intermediate econometrics.

The seminar is restricted to 14 participants. If you are interested in participating, please send an e-mail at your earliest convenience to Judith Müller at sek.schulze[at]vwl.uni-freiburg.de, but by October 6th at the very latest. Please put Ramón Rey in the Cc (ramon.rey[at]vwl.uni-freiburg.de) and don’t forget to attach your transcript of records.

The topics will be presented and allocated during the first meeting.

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Content

The course covers empirical labor economics, modern econometrics, and modern business analytics. The main textbooks are Taddy et al. (2023) and Huber (2023). I use R scripts for each session. Students should sign in at posit.cloud to get access to RStudio. Each session will be recorded via Zoom.

Complementary YouTube-Videos are available on my channel (https://www.youtube.com/chan-nel/UCi5oODsxMKzuMiI9PFp3CSw).

Topics covered are:

• ­Regression in R
• Causal Inference with Experiments (RCT, RDD, IV)
• ­Causal Inference with Controls (Matching, DiD)
• Labor Market and Education (Mincer equation)
• Simulation-based Inference (SBI): Bootstrapping (Resampling), Shuffling
• Introduction to Causal Machine Learning (LASSO, Random Forest)

 Lecture

ZOOM Live Sessions

Zoom-Link via mail to signed-in participants (Ilias)

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