Seminar: Applied Labor Economics

The seminar provides students with the opportunity to deepen their knowledge on a topic of their choice within the field of labor economics and to conduct their own empirical analysis.

In addition to core topics in labor economics (such as labor demand and supply, unemployment, job search, human capital, discrimination, and labor market policies), seminar papers may also explore topics at the intersection of labor economics with health, education, behavioral, organizational, or financial economics.

Seminar papers may involve, for example, the examination and replication of research findings from existing studies published in highly ranked economic journals. Alternatively, students may define their own specific research question.

Students are expected to analyze and discuss the relevant literature, as well as the underlying economic concepts. Additionally, they should critically evaluate the research designs of existing studies or develop their own research design, including deriving potential policy implications.

For the empirical analysis, students may reconstruct and reassess existing estimations, perform additional sensitivity analyses, or re-run estimations using different datasets.

Examples of datasets suitable for empirical analysis will be discussed during the introductory meeting. Please note that many economic journals require authors to provide the datasets used in their empirical analyses. For instance, journals such as The American Economic Review, American Economic Journal: Applied Economics, Journal of Applied Econometrics, and Journal of Political Economy offer free public access to a wide range of datasets through their online archives.

Additionally, more aggregated data can be found on various websites, such as the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics, Eurostat, the OECD, Statistics Denmark, and the Danish Agency for Labour Market and Recruitment.