GradMicro III, 2020

This site contains the course material in Graduate Microeconomics III, a field course at the phd level. You find the course description, course schedule and class material.

  1. Learning outcomes

  2. Class material

  3. Course schedule

  4. Course description

  5. Tasks

Course schedule


Lecture 1. Setup and structure

Background reading ("required" in bold):

  • Dekel and Lipman (2010) How (not) to do decision theory, Annual Review of Economics

  • Morgenstern (1972) Thirteen critical points in contemporary economic theory: an interpretation, Journal of Economic Literature

  • Gabaix and Laibson (2008) The seven properties of good models, The methodologies of modern economics: foundations of positive and normative economics

  • Card, DellaVigna and Malmendier (2011) The role of theory in field experiments, Journal of Economic Perspectives

      • Descriptive

        • Miguel and Kremer (2004) Works: identifying impacts on education and health in the presence of treatment externalities, Econometrica

      • Single model

        • Nagin et al. (2002) Monitoring, motivation and management: the determinants of opportunistic behavior in a field experiment, American Economic Review

      • Competing models

        • Ferh and Goette (2007) Do workers work more if wages are high? Evidence from a randomized field experiment, American Economic Review

      • Parameter estimation

        • Tood and Wolpin (2006) Assessing the impact of a school subsidy program in Mexico: using a social experiment to validate a dynamic behavioral model of child schooling and fertility, American Economic Review

ECON-S-519 Graduate Microeconomics III, 2020

Instructor: Øyvind Aas (Universite libré de Bruxelles and Kristiania University College)

Course description

Graduate microeconomics 3 is a reading group in microeconomic theory. The course aims to teach participants how to think about research in microeconomic theory.

Target audience

You work or want to work on theory for your research. Especially welcome are our colleagues whose work is empirical but want to formalize a mechanism for the relations you study.

Example

Banerjee, A., Chandrasekhar, A., Duflo, E. and Jackson, M. (2019) Using gossips to spread information: theory and evidence from two randomized controlled trials, Review of Economic Studies, 86(6): 2453 – 2490.

They want to understand how information on two topics, “a lottery to win a cellphone” and “immunization camps”, spreads in two villages in India (i.e., network theory, RCT and data on village networks)

Eligible students

Students in the research master or phd students.

Please send me an email if you want to attend, audit the course, or have any questions about the fit of the course with your research. Then we can start planning the reading list, discuss papers to be included and the final structure.

Reading list

Whatever you want to work on, as long as it has a microeconomic theory component. For example: applied theory for an empirical paper or applied/pure theory.

Structure

• Discussion (20%): Every week we discuss ca. 2 to 4 papers (2x45 min): motivation, insight, contribution/novelty and importance (no first-order conditions). Then we discuss what the paper lacks or what the natural next directions for research are. The students lead the discussion.

• Referee report (20%): Halfway in the course you write a referee report on a paper you chose. This report is to further understand the state of the art in your field to improve your own paper’s contribution.

• FNRS grant proposal (60%): The final evaluation is to write a four-page grant proposal (including references) on goal of research, state of the art, methodology, preliminary results and contribution. Deadline: 9am December 7, 2020. (The deadline for an FNRS phd grant is in the end of February. Hence, you can get comments before you submit.)

Time and location

Wednesday 10.30 - 12.00, Zoom (to be distributed)

October 7 - December 9 (10 sessions in total, 2x 45 min)