Economics (all)

This course focuses on the role of public policy and government regulation in the labor market using the tools of applied economics. The overarching theme of the course will be to consider how public policies influence labor market outcomes such as employment, wages, and the distribution of income. It covers topics the impact of public policies such as social welfare programs, taxation, income transfer programs, minimum wage laws; and the impacts of mandated employer benefits such as health insurance, unemployment insurance and public pension insurance. The class will teach some basic econometrics and most problem sets involve analyzing data in the software package Stata.

This course is designed for graduate students interested in international trade, labor economics, development economics, applied econometrics, and the Chinese economy.

Our first goal is to provide an introduction to a set of important topics related to the economic development of China so that students have a good understanding of the Chinese economy and China’s impact on the rest of the world. A tentative list of topics includes the US-China trade war, China’s one-child policy, unbalanced sex ratio, aging, income inequality, agricultural reforms, and firm reforms.

The second goal is to present the empirical tools used to test related economic theories in the context of China and to discuss the empirical relevance of related theories. We will emphasize the conceptual issues and basic statistical techniques, such as instrumental variables strategy and differences-in-differences-type strategies. Students will also get familiar with several widely used Chinese datasets and learn how to conduct empirical analysis.

Our third goal to introduce the frontier researches to students. We will draw on some recent academic papers from development economics, labor economics, international trade, macroeconomics, and economic growth, which will allow students to have a good understanding of cutting-edge researches and help students outline future research questions.

Economic history is important to understand long-run economic development, in particular to study the question why some countries are rich and others remain poor. In this course, we focus on selected topics of quantitative economic history that applied economists and economic historians explored in recent years. Topics include trade, the importance of institutions for economic development, religion, human capital, innovation, market integration, financial development, inequality, migration, and epidemics. The weekly lecture (2 hours) gives you an overview on recent empirical research on each topic. In the weekly exercise sessions (2 hours), we then discuss important research papers in more depth. It is required that every course participant presents a critical discussion of one research paper.

This course offers an introduction to the economics of Social Insurance and other public social expenditure policies. The first part focuses on social insurance, including unemployment insurance, health insurance and retirement pensions. The second part deals with other social expenditure policies, including education and low-income transfers. The course discusses the rationales for government intervention in different areas, as well as potential problems associated with it. Students will become familiar with recent empirical evidence on individual behavioral responses as well as the effectiveness of different government policies.

Einführungsveranstaltung:     Mittwoch, den 8. September 2021, 15:30–17:00 Uhr via ZOOM
Blocktermin 1:                       tba
Blocktermin 2:                       tba

Weitere Informationen: Die Anmeldung zum Seminar erfolgt während des zentralen Anmeldezeitraums (07.06.2021 – 13.06.2021). Weitere für die Anmeldung relevante Informationen werden über den Newsletter der Abteilung VWL mitgeteilt: https://www.vwl.uni-mannheim.de/service/fuer-studierende/mailingliste-vwlstudium/.

The purpose of this module is to provide an introduction to modern microeconometrics – the statistical methods that economists use to analyze microlevel data. This module is primarily designed for Bachelor students who already have some background knowledge in econometrics and would like to learn more econometric tools and theories. We will cover various topics including OLS; Panel data models; Causal inference; Binary choice models; Generalized method of moments; Nonparametric models and  Penalized regression in the module.

This course provides an introduction to the economic analysis of politics. This course consists of three parts. Part I provides an overview of economic theories on the political behavior of the key actors in the political arena: voters, candidates, legislatures, political parties, and interest groups. Part II discusses alternative voting rules and introduces some important ideas from social choice theory. Part III discusses how political decisions are distorted away from those that would be made by the benevolent governments from economics textbooks. If time permits, we also discuss contemporary issues in politics, including citizen initiatives, media bias, and campaign finance reforms.