For Students

Spring, 2021 Applied Econometric Methods for the Social Sciences (together with Dr. C. Funk, MsC. E. Bukin):

Overview:

This course is taught in a semi-asynchronous way with most lectures, seminars and practical session taking place online in MS Teams, every week on Wednesday's afternoons 14:00-18:00 CET. Some lectures and supporting materials are also pre-recorded and published on Ilias. The course consists of:

- Lectures – online presentations made by responsible lecturers that require your active participation and interactive questioning;

- Seminars – online meetings where graded group presentations (40% of the final grade) are delivered and followed by a structured discussion. Each student/group is expected to deliver one presentation during the course. Everyone is expected to participate in the seminar discussions.

- Practical session – online exercise sessions, where we will be performing econometric analysis in R using the web-based JLU R-Studio server.

Learning objectives in practice:

- get familiar with fundamental econometric techniques;

- develop ability to reason on the appropriation of specific econometric methods;

- learn how to apply those econometrics in “R” independently, using real-world data;

- exercise interpreting and communicating statistical results of the econometric analysis.

Examination and grades:

Group presentations (40% of the final grade)

- Each group consisting of 2-3 students will present one pre-assigned academic paper during the course.

- Academic papers will be assigned to each group (one paper per group) three weeks before their presentation.

- Each group will have three weeks to prepare a presentation following proposed structure.

- Presentations will take place during the seminars.

- Seminar discussion are expected to be based on the groups’ presentations.

Open book practical exam in R and follow-up oral defence of the results (60% of the final grade)

- Takes place during the examination period;

- Students have access to all learning materials during the exam;

- Students are not allowed to communicate between each other during the exam.

- They are expected to:

1 perform simple econometric analysis in R within a fixed period (up to 2 hours).

2 copy/paste R code, analysis results (R output), and bullet-points of key findings into a plain text file.

3 submit this text file before the deadline.

- Same day, individual appointments are made with each student, where each person answers the question concerning own analysis and results (15 min max).

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Environmental Economics:

This intensive course introduces major concepts in the field of environmental economics. It is designed to help students understand theories related to natural resources and make use of microeconomic and statistical analysis. This course will also focus on valuation techniques for environmental goods used in the real world by analyst and policy makers. There is a growing demand in economics and public sectors for people with quantitative skills who are able to understand and apply these techniques, analyze results, and produce reports. By the end of this course, students should be able to analyze economic problems related to environmental goods using rigorous valuation techniques.