This course is compulsory on the MSc in Economics (2 Year Programme). This course is not available as an outside option to students on other programmes.

New course for the 2027/28 academic session.

Pre-requisites:

Before taking this course, students must have completed: (EC451 or EC400) and (EC4B2 or EC4B1) and (EC4A1 or EC4A2) and (EC4C2 or EC4C1).

The course will be split into two 5-week segments with each component investigating a different research field (typically one in microeconomics and one in macroeconomics to cater to different student preferences).

The course will be rotated across different fields over the years to ensure equal representation across the major sub-fields of economics.

The course would start off by specifying a set of policy-relevant research questions at the frontiers of the field to be investigated, which would then undergo the following steps:

(i) exploration of commonly-used methodologies in the field, (ii) designing an empirical specification and constructing testable hypotheses, (iii) data cleaning and analysis; (iv) econometric estimation and inference.

The course design will aim to address inclusivity by studying how different cultural norms and institutions may shape the economic outcomes in question.

2-hour long weekly seminars will involve implementation of the methodologies discussed in lecture. The objectives is twofold – in some classes, students will discuss papers in the relevant literature to reinforce understanding of the methodologies and engage in group presentations critically analysing these approaches, in others they will engage in hands-on empirical work estimating the empirical specifications which were presented in the lectures, involving data work and econometric analysis.

20 hours of lectures and 16 hours of seminars in the Winter Term.

This course has a reading week in Week 6 of Winter Term.

Project (50%, 3000 words) in Winter Term Week 7.

Project (50%, 3000 words) in Spring Term Week 1.