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ECON0062 - Topics in Labour Economics


Aims:

This course provides an overview of key topics in the field of labour economics. More specifically, the course:

  • teaches the key elements of labour economics
  • uses labour economics to say something about how real world phenomena related to the labour market work
  • shows how models in labour economics derived from first order principles can inform empirical analysis and policy
  • is strongly empirically motivated, but also stresses the links between theoretical and empirical research
  • touches at commonly used empirical methods to obtain causal effects (difference-in-differences, instrumental variables, regression discontinuity)
  • covers key papers (often written 15-20 years ago) in conjunction with related (unpublished) papers at the current research frontier

Course outline:   

  • Lecture 1: Human Capital and Wages
  • Lecture 2: The Sources of Wage Growth
  • Lecture 3: The Structure of Wages and Inequality of Earnings I
  • Lecture 4: Inequality: Supply, Demand, Institutions, and Polarisation
  • Lecture 5: Discrimination and Symmetric Employer Learning
  • Lecture 6: Asymmetric Information and Labour Markets
  • Lecture 7: Self-Selection and the Roy Model
  • Lecture 8: Monopsony in the Labour Market and Minimum Wages
  • Lecture 9: The Effect of Migration on Wages and Employment
  • Lecture 10: Social Interactions, Networks, and Neighbourhood Effects
Taught by:

Christian Dustmann

Assessment:

There is a 2-hour unseen written exam in the third term and there will be 6 tutorial classes with 5 written assignments of which 3 have to be submitted.

Suitable for:Graduate students
Prerequisites:ECON0064: Econometrics
Moodle page:ECON0062