Our Teaching Concept
Our teaching concept focuses on developing the skills that are essential for empirical economists—and that enable students to truly understand empirical research.
Various types of courses—reading courses, applied courses, seminars, and writing workshops—build on one another and develop specific skills corresponding to a particular phase of research (working with the literature, data analysis, academic writing, and academic presentation).
Reading Courses
The Economics of Terror, The Economics of Corruption, The Political Economy of Information and Media
Master’s students learn to read and understand academic articles, grasp the underlying empirical concepts—including potential issues—develop relevant research ideas, and select the appropriate econometric model to identify causal relationships.
Practical Empirical Courses
e.g., Introduction to Empirical Economics Using Stata
Participants learn how to carry out their own research in practice (data collection, programming, generating and visualizing results, and evaluating them).
Seminars
e.g., The Determinants of Violent Behavior, The Political Economy of Religion
Here, students learn and practice academic writing and presentation skills.
Finally, we provide our students with close guidance and support as they work on their theses. This includes participation in our advanced seminars for master’s students, where students present their advanced work, view presentations by others, and receive detailed feedback.
We are constantly refining our program and ensuring that our courses incorporate the latest literature and continue to evolve. Our teaching approach is based on pedagogical principles and involves a high degree of interaction and feedback. Our goal is to enable students to truly understand research and carry out their own projects, and to guide them quickly toward doctoral research projects.
We can gauge the success of our goal—to inspire students to engage in empirical research and motivate them to conduct independent and original research—by the significant increase in the number of students writing empirical papers. And, even more importantly, by the growing number of papers being published (jointly) in high-impact, peer-reviewed journals (e.g., the Journal of Law and Economics, Economic Letters, the European Journal of Political Economy, the European Economic Review, and the Journal of Development Economics). This is highly unusual and something we are very proud of!