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International Economics
25 May 2021

PhD economics courses now open to students from other Swiss universities

The International Economics Department welcomes participants from Swiss universities in its PhD courses. 

With this initiative, the Department wishes to provide PhD students working in international economics in Switzerland an opportunity to interact and develop a community with their peers.  

We offer courses in Development Economics, International Trade and International Macro/Finance, which you can explore in the sliders below. These courses are organised in the form of modules concentrated over consecutive days to allow students to participate on-site. Remote access will also be provided. 

Students are welcome to take the course for ECTS credits or to participate as auditors.  

If you are interested in one or more courses, please send a message to ei@graduateinstitute.ch.

The detailed calendar will be available soon.

Courses in Development Economics

ADVANCED DEVELOPMENT MACROECONOMICS: EMPIRICAL RESEARCH

Martina Viarengo - EI084 - Fall 2021

The objective of this course is to provide students with an in-depth coverage of the most relevant topics in Development Macroeconomics. The topics covered include economic growth and inequality, poverty traps, institutions and the emerging field of culture. 

This course will also explore empirical methods used to rigorously measure the impact of the determinants of economic growth and long-run development. Students will be provided with a comprehensive overview of both fundamental and state-of-the-art empirical tools and methodologies.

Classes are interactive. They consist of lectures, presentations and critical discussions of selected articles that cover leading research issues, which are at the frontier, in Development Macroeconomics.

A provisional syllabus will be available soon.

ADVANCED DEVELOPMENT MACROECONOMICS: DRIVERS OF GROWTH 

Cédric Tille - EI085 - Fall 2021

The course reviews the main theories of growth, and shows how policies such as competition or education can impact economic growth. The course consists of a first part made of lectures and a second part where students present papers from the syllabus. Students are evaluated on the presentation and the exam in the final week.

A provisional syllabus will be available soon.

ADVANCED DEVELOPMENT MICROECONOMICS: MARKET FAILURES

Lore Vandewalle – EI098 – Spring 2022

The course focuses on labour, credit and insurance markets and more precisely on the role that market failures play in poverty and underdevelopment. It discusses canonical papers in applied micro theory that lay out the constraints faced by individuals, and recent empirical work evaluating programs that aim at alleviating those constraints.

A provisional syllabus will be available soon.

ADVANCED DEVELOPMENT MICROECONOMICS: OTHER TOPICS

Lore Vandewalle – EI099 – Spring 2022

The course will cover different topics in development economics (savings, poverty traps, nutrition, health and education) and in political economy (culture, norms and institutions).

A provisional syllabus will be available soon.

Courses in International Trade

ADVANCED INTERNATIONAL TRADE. BASELINE TRADE THEORIES

Richard Baldwin - EI081 - Fall 2021 

This course provides students with an advanced understanding of baseline international trade theory while teaching them to think with general equilibrium models and to extend models to address new issues. Considerable class time is devoted to exercises,  discussions of the underlying mechanisms driving the models, and to the ways of extending the models. 

The course involves a combination of lectures, online groupwork and online presentations.  

A provisional syllabus will be available soon.

Advanced International Trade B: Topics in International Trade

Julia Cajal-Grossi - EI088 - Spring 2022

This is the first course in a two-part sequence. We study recent developments in empirical international trade and focus on estimation methods drawn from the field of empirical industrial organization. The reading materials include a mix of trade theory papers, empirical trade papers and industrial organization applications. The sessions will combine expositions by the lecturer, presentations by students and “hands-on” coding, mostly in Matlab and Stata. 

We will start by studying the sources, implications and empirical patterns of heterogeneity across firms in international trade. Focusing on productivity heterogeneity, we will study approaches for estimating production function parameters, as well as supply-side approaches to recover heterogeneous markups.

A provisional syllabus will be available soon.

Advanced International Trade B: Advanced Topics in International Trade

Julia Cajal-Grossi - EI089 - Spring 2022

This is the second course in a two-part sequence. We study recent developments in empirical international trade and focus on estimation methods drawn from the field of empirical industrial organization. The reading materials include a mix of trade theory papers, empirical trade papers and industrial organization applications. The sessions will combine expositions by the lecturer, presentations by students and “hands-on” coding, mostly in Matlab and Stata.

We will discuss demand-side heterogeneity and quality, and study discrete-choice models for demand estimation. We will discuss models with demand-side driven heterogeneous markups. The final section of the course will focus on information frictions and the estimation of discrete choice problems with adverse selection and moral hazard.

A provisional syllabus will be available soon.

Courses in International Macroeconomics and Finance

ADVANCED INTERNATIONAL MACROECONOMICS: METHODS AND MODELS

Paolo Cavallino TBC – EI082 – Fall 2021

This course provides an overview of the basic dynamic models of international macroeconomics and their solution methods. We will study and solve the classical small open economy (SOE) real business cycle (RBC) model, the SOE New Keynesian (NK) model, and the two-country model. We will study and use different solution methods including perturbation methods and global solution methods.

The course is mostly focused on modelling techniques and solution methods. However, we will also look at the data and evaluate the empirical performance of the model considered. The goal is to learn the basic tools that are necessary to understand and replicate existing papers in the field of international macroeconomics, and eventually write original ones.

A provisional syllabus will be available soon.

ADVANCED INTERNATIONAL MACROECONOMICS: SELECTED TOPICS

Paolo Cavallino TBC– EI083 – Fall 2021

This course provides a graduate-level treatment of selected advanced topics in international macroeconomics determined partly by the interests of class participants. Sample topics are: international risk sharing; trade-macro linkages; sovereign debt and default; emerging market business cycles; exchange rate puzzles; capital flows. The class will involve presenting and discussing current papers, and writing referee reports. After taking this course, students will be expected to develop a critical and creative approach to reading and evaluating the recent literature in international macroeconomics for the purpose of improving one's own research.

A provisional syllabus will be available soon.

ADVANCED INTERNATIONAL MACROECONOMICS B: POLICIES TO HARNESS FINANCIAL GLOBALISATION

Cédric Tille – EI090 – Spring 2022

The course reviews the patterns of financial globalization and the associated policy challenges. It discusses recent works on imbalances, the global financial cycle and the usefulness of the exchange rate, externalities in international borrowing and policies to handle them. The course consists of a first part made of lectures and a second part where students present papers from the syllabus. Students are evaluated on the presentation and a short literature review paper on a topic of their choosing.

A provisional syllabus will be available soon.

ADVANCED INTERNATIONAL MACROECONOMICS B: INTERNATIONAL POLICY: CONSTRAINTS, CHANGING EFFECTIVENESS, AND NEW TOOLS

Cédric Tille – EI091 – Spring 2022

The course reviews recent developments of macroeconomic policy in open economies. It discusses recent works on the drivers of the low level of interest rates and their impact, frameworks for the design of policy including the challenges when interest rates are at their lower bound, and the dominant role of some currencies. The course consists of a first part made of lectures and a second part where students present papers from the syllabus. Students are evaluated on the presentation and a short literature review paper on a topic of their choosing.

A provisional syllabus will be available soon.