wir876 - Topics in Economic Research

wir876 - Topics in Economic Research

Department of Business Administration, Economics and Law (Economics) 6 KP
Module components Semester courses Sommersemester 2019 Examination
Course or seminar (oder Kolloquium)
  • No access 2.02.823 - Inequality and Environmental Policy Show lecturers
    • Dr. rer. pol. Philipp Poppitz
    • Jasper Meya

    Monday: 12:00 - 16:00, weekly (from 01/04/19), Location: V04 1-146
    Dates on Friday, 19.07.2019 - Saturday, 20.07.2019 10:00 - 18:00, Location: A05 1-159

    Motivation and background: The distributive effects (‘incidence’) of environmental policies are becoming increasingly important for the political feasibility of environmental policies addressing e.g. climate change or biodiversity loss. The protest of the yellow vests that stopped Macrons petrol tax due to the expected distributional consequences are a prominent example. Also in Germany the incidence of environmental policies such as the coal exit, a pesticide tax or a land value tax is of high concern in public debates. The need for stringent environmental policies comes at a time where many countries of the world have become becoming increasingly unequal in the distribution of income and wealth. In Germany for example, the Gini index of disposable income increased from 0.25 in the 1980s to 0.293 in 2015. Therefore, the acceptance and political feasibility of environmental policies depends not only on their aggregate costs, but also on their distributional effects. On the global stage the trends are slightly different, but the challenge remains the same. Global income inequality has fallen over the last decades but the impact of fundamental global environmental changes caused by human action will have increasingly strong distributional effects not only within but also between countries. Therefore, also the (economic) resources for adaptation and mitigation strategies against climate change must be distributed within and between countries. While economics as a discipline has focused mainly on efficiency in the past, policy makers are frequently more concerned with distributive effects and justice. In this course, we aim at learning and extending state-of-the-art environmental economics methods to analyse, understand and manage the distributional implications of environmental policies and enable students to apply these to real world cases. Aims and scope: In this course, we will study the multifaceted relationships between inequality and environmental policy. The course starts with a series of lectures on inequality, distribute justice and environmental policy instruments. Thereby students will be encouraged and supported to stepwise develop their own project. This could be for instance an analysis of the distributive effects of the diesel car ban in German cities, pesticide taxes, the German coal exit or energy turn, house prices in urban centres or biodiversity loss. Further topics include the distribution of risks related to climate change, macroeconomic consequences of environmental policies or multilateral action against climate change in an unequal world. Students will present sketches for their projects early on. In the following seminar weeks student have time to work on their project under the support by the lectures. Finally, in a two days block course students will present their project in a scientific conference style and mutually review their papers. Format: • Sessions 1 to 4: lectures, with interactive parts to facilitate the development of own project ideas, reading and discussing case studies in groups • Session 5: Sketches of research projects by students • Sessions 6 to 12: work on individual projects • Block seminar: 19.07. and 20.07. from 10 to 18: presentation and discussion of student projects in a scientific conference style including a chair, presenters and discussants.

  • No access 2.02.853 - Spatial Econometrics (Course) Show lecturers
    • Prof. Dr. Erkan Gören

    Wednesday: 16:00 - 18:00, weekly (from 03/04/19)

  • No access 2.02.854 - Spatial Econometrics (Exercise) Show lecturers
    • Prof. Dr. Erkan Gören

    Thursday: 12:00 - 14:00, weekly (from 04/04/19)

  • No access 2.12.282 - Computational Economics Show lecturers
    • Prof. Dr. Christoph Böhringer

    Monday: 10:00 - 12:00, weekly (from 01/04/19)

    Topics in economic research

Colloquium
Exercises
Hinweise zum Modul
Prüfungszeiten
will be announced in the first session
Module examination
term paper or
presentation or
written exam or
oral exam or
portfolio.
Skills to be acquired in this module
Students have the opportunity to take an economics module of their choice (worth 6 CP) at the master's level. This can also take place at another university or during studies abroad.

Students are required to:
  • independently engage with a topic using scientific methods,
  • indepedently research and make use of current academic literature,
  • integrate their topic into an academic discussion.

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