Model Building for Applied (Labor) Economists

Catalog description

The aim of the course “Model Building for Applied (Labor) Economists” is to equip applied researchers with the tools to formalize their theories in terms of mathematical economic models. In contrast to a classical economic theory course that is built mostly around solving models, this course spends more time on the art of building simple models – ideally in a way that captures the key ideas but remains simple enough to allow relatively easy insights. We will review the basic setup of models including some discussion of ways in which to keep models tractable; and we will read papers that successfully put some of these principles into action. Participants will present some of these papers, and they have to build models and derive insights from them.