Set up: Students in the 3rd year course Intermediate Microeconomics need to form groups of 3 or 4 students. Each group selects one of the selected papers (every year they have the choice between two or three papers). The assignment is to write an essay about the paper in which they not only explain what the article is about but also answer a list of questions specific to the chosen article. Some questions have been posed with the objective of forcing students to include essential information, other questions are more difficult and aim to test students' deeper understanding of the paper. In this way, students go really into the deep at the end of their undergraduate studies and learn to read and evaluate scientific research. Moreover, they see how the theoretical concepts and modeling techniques that they have learned about are fruitfully applied in current research to address important socio-economic questions.
Selected papers
2021-22 [Assignment] [Answers]
Reimers, Imke, and Joel Waldfogel. 2021. “Digitization and Pre-Purchase Information: The Causal and Welfare Impacts of Reviews and Crowd Ratings.” American Economic Review, 111(6): 1944–1971.
Angrist, Joshua D., Sydner Caldwell, and Jonathan V. Hall. 2021. “Uber versus Taxi: A Driver’s Eye View.” American Economic Journal: Applied Economics, 13(3): 272–308
2020-21 [Assignment] [Answers]
Raj Chetty Adam Looney, and Kory Kroft, “Salience and Taxation: Theory and Evidence,” American Economic Review, September 2009, 99 (4), 1145–1177.
Dmitry Taubinsky and Alex Rees-Jones, “Attention Variation and Welfare: Theory and Evidence from a Tax Salience Experiment,” Review of Economic Studies, 2018, 85, 2462–2496.
2019-20 [Assignment] [Answers]
Daniel J. Benjamin, Ori Heffetz, Miles S. Kimball, and Alex Rees-Jones, “Can Marginal Rates of Substitution Be Inferred from Happiness Data? Evidence from Residency Choices,” American Economic Review, 2014, 104 (11), 3498–3528.
Hastings, Justine and Jesse M. Shapiro, “How Are SNAP Benefits Spent? Evidence from a Retail Panel,” American Economic Review, December 2018, 108 (12), 3493–3540.