Advanced course in economics I

Teacher(s)

Vandenberghe Vincent;

Language

English

Content

This course is destined for students with an interest in applied labour economics and a taste/competency for data analysis. It aims to show students how they can gain insight and understanding of the different facets of wage discrimination and related labour inequalities and how these can relatively easily be quantified and analysed using different sorts of data.
We will focus on GENDER and MIGRANT labour-market outcome inequalities.

Keywords: wage discrimination, employment and occupation segregation, job arduousness, applied econometrics

Teaching methods

The course will equip students with the theoretical background as well as the econometric tools enabling them to carry out state-of-the-art research, exploiting the growing availability of i) firm-level microdata, with detailed information about the composition of the labour force, labour compensation and productivity, but also ii) life-course data informing on respondents’ entire job history, the arduousness of their successive jobs, the number of gaps between jobs or the number of times they have been made redundant. 

Evaluation methods

Continuing evaluation
 there will be two (marked) assignments involving the analysis of micro data (one gender and one on immigration status).
 

Other information

Prerequisites: a good background in labour economics, good knowledge of the theory of production function and econometrics. Students are supposed to be familiar with data handling and programming using one of the most common statistical software (Stata, SAS, R). They are strongly advised to attend the ESL's Bootcamp and the following SMCS advanced programming course.
 

Faculty or entity

ECON