Memo for incoming M1 students interested in labor economics research

Prepared by Andrew S. Griffen

           This memo provides some requirements and recommendations for incoming master’s degree students in the Graduate School of Economics at the University of Tokyo who are interested in being advised on empirical or labor related topics by any of following professors: Kawaguchi, Yamaguchi, Tanaka, Kawada, Kondo, Griffen, or Son.

           First, we require you to take either Labor Economics I (Prof. Kondo, S1) or Empirical Microeconomics (Prof. Griffen, A1A2) in your first year or the first half of your second year. The purpose of these courses is to introduce students to basic techniques in data analysis using R or  Stata and to introduce students to the basic research designs for causal inference that are used extensively in empirical microeconomics research. Likely your thesis will analyze data using a method that you learn about in these classes. From our perspective, it is very difficult to advise students who have not taken these basic courses, which is why we want to have some uniformity of requirements. In terms of difficulty, Professor Kondo’s course is probably slightly easier than Professor Griffen’s course so students should consider selecting into each course based on their initial ability. However, both are perfectly manageable.

           Second, we recommend that you take additional courses according to your area of interest. There are many interesting courses offered including topics courses in labor; Labor Economics II (Prof. Kawaguchi), Economics of the Family (Prof. Yamaguchi), Economics of Education (Prof. Tanaka), and Empirical Market Design (Prof. Son) as well as methodological courses; Machine Learning Methods for Empirical Economics (Prof. Kawata), R for Empirical Economics Research (Prof. Griffen) Applied Econometrics (Prof. Son), and Discrete Choice Models (Prof. Son)[1].

In addition, if you have not taken any labor economics courses at the undergraduate level, please take the undergraduate level Labor Economics I and II (taught in Japanese). If you do not speak

Japanese, you should read one of the following textbooks on your own.

 George Borjas, “Labor Economics,” McGraw-Hill

 Ehrenberg, Ronald and Robert, Smith, “Modern Labor Economics,” Routledge.

           Finally, students should consider attending the Microeconomics seminars on Tuesdays 10:30 - 12:00 as well as Empirical Micro seminars, which is occasionally held on Monday 10:30-12:00. The seminar series is excellent and gets lots of great speakers. It’s really useful to see research being presented and can help you develop ideas for your own research. You can find a schedule on the CIRJE website http://www.cirje.e.u-tokyo.ac.jp/ where you can incorporate the CIRJE calendar into your personal google calendar. It is also possible to get added to the mailing list for a particular seminar series by contacting CIRJE directly.

[1] Applied Econometrics and Discrete Choice Models taught by Prof. Son teach similar materials – please refer to their syllabi.