Two - Year Master Degree in Economics

Take students closer to contemporary research in labor

Students will be in a position to present and discuss an advanced  research paper in labor and conduct independent empirical analysis

Standard Class, second part online

First part: There will also be two/three problem sets in the first part of the course. The exam on the first part of the course will be based on a small workshop in which subtends will present a paper from the literature.

Second part: students will be required to conduct some original empirical analysis and then write and present a short paper discussing their work.   

 The course is in two parts and offers an overview of two approaches to labor market analysis. The first part covers search and matching models with (mainly) various applications, including the most recent one to the epidemic models.  The first part relies on some numerical simulations and knowledge of Python in the way used for the Numerical Economics Course is useful but not essential.

Labor economics has been an important discipline in terms of applying and developing empirical techniques. As a result, the second part of the course focuses on these empirical methods and their application to the major topics studied by labor economists. The course includes applications and examples using Stata and discussion of research papers.

Class for the First Part: (Week 1-5)

Monday: 16-19. Room 31

Tuesday: 16-18. Room 31

The time table of the second rest of the class will be available through on line modules on moodle.

 

First Part.

There are two textbook references for the first part, as well as lecture notes:

Pissarides C.A. (2000) Equilibrium Unemployment Theory, MIT Press. Hereafter P2000

Petrosky Nadeau Wasmer (2017) Labor, Credit and Goods Market: The Macroeconomic of  Search and Unemployment.  Hereafter PNW2017

Acemoglu, Daron (2018) Lecture in Labor Economics  (Part 4 Search and Unemployment) (Acemoglu)

 

1.One Sided Search

Acemoglu, Chapter 10

Mc Call (1970)  The Economics of Information and Job Search, The Quarterly Journal of Economics Vol. 84, No. 1

Lecture Notes, Pietro Garibaldi

 

2.The basic labor market,

PNW2017, Chapter 1

Acemoglu, Chapter 11 Chapter 12

Lecture Notes, Pietro Garibaldi

Pissarides, 1985, Short Run equilibrium dynamics of unemployment, vacancies, and real wages, American Economic Review, 75(4): 676-90

Mortensen D.T. and Pissarides, C.A. (1994) Job creation and destruction in the theory of unemployment, The Review of Economic Studies, 61(3): 397-415

 

2. Efficiency, Competitive Search and Directed Search

PNW2017, Chapter 3

Acemoglu

Moen, 1997 Competitive Search Equilibrium Journal of Political Economy 105(2):385-411

Benoit Julien, Kircher Philippe, Wright Randy and Veroica Guerrieri (2018) Directed Search: A Guided Tour, unpublished.

Acemoglu, Chapter 13

 

3. Business Cycle Properties

PNW2017, Chapter 2

Shimer (2005) The cyclical behavior of equilibrium unemployment and vacancies, American Economic Review, 95(1): 25-49.

Ljungkvist Lars and Sargent T. (2017) The Fundamental Surplus, American Economic Review, 2017, 107(9): 2630/2665

 

4. Credit and labor market frictions

PNW2017, Chapter 5 and 6

Boeri Garibaldi Moen (2018) Mortensen and Pissarides meet Holmstrom and Tirole, Labour Economics, 2018.

 

5. Temporary Contracts and Duality

Garibaldi, P.  Boeri, T. (2020) “Twenty Years of Temporary Employment”, in progress.

Cahuc, Pierre, Olivier Charlot and Franck Malherbet Explaining the Spread of Temporary Jobs and its Impact on labor turnover, International Economic Review, vol 57(2), pp533-572, May 2016.

Boeri Garibaldi Moen (2017) Inside Severance Pay, Journal of Public Economics

 

6. Search and the SIR Epidemic model

Garibaldi, P.  Moen, E. and C.A. Pissarides (2020) “Modeling Contact and Transition in the SIR Epidemic Model”, CEPR Covid Economics: Vetted and Real Time Papers.

Garibaldi, P.  Moen, E. and C.A. Pissarides (2020) “Static and Dynamic Externalities in a COVID Model”, In progress.

Farboodi, M. Jarosch, G. and R. Shimer (2020)  “Internal and External Effects in Social Distancing in a Pandemic”, https://sites.google.com/site/robertshimer/research/workingpapers

 

Second Part

References for the second part:

J.D. Angrist and J.S. Pischke, Mostly Harmless Econometrics: An Empiricist's Companion, Princeton University Press, 2009. Hereafter MHE.

Articles provided by the lecturer.

 

1. Empirical Strategies in Labor Economics

Introduction and Motivation.  Identification strategies for causal relationships.

2. Potential outcomes approach

Social experiments. Non-experimental methods. A field experiment on discrimination in the labor market

MHE ch. 2

Bertrand, Marianne, and Sendhil Mullainathan. "Are Emily and Greg more employable than Lakisha and Jamal? A field experiment on labor market discrimination." American economic review 94, no. 4 (2004): 991-1013.

3. Controlling strategies. Regression estimators

The returns to education

MHE ch.3

4. IV methods

Family size and labor supply, estimation of labor demand

MHE ch. 4

Acemoglu, Daron, David H. Autor, and David Lyle. "Women, war, and wages: The effect of female labor supply on the wage structure at midcentury." Journal of political Economy 112, no. 3 (2004): 497-551.

5. Panel data. Diff-in-diff strategies

The effects of migration and minimum wages

MHE ch 5

Card, David. "The impact of the Mariel boatlift on the Miami labor market." ILR Review 43, no. 2 (1990): 245-257.

Card, David, and Alan Krueger. "A Case Study of the Fast-Food Industry in New Jersey and Pennsylvania." American Economic Review 84, no. 4 (1994): 773-93.

Draca, Mirko, Stephen Machin, and John Van Reenen. "Minimum wages and firm profitability." American economic journal: applied economics 3, no. 1 (2011): 129-51.

6. Regression discontinuity designs

The effect of alchool consmption on mortality; the effect of class size on student performance

MHE ch.6

Carpenter, Christopher, and Carlos Dobkin. "The effect of alcohol consumption on mortality: regression discontinuity evidence from the minimum drinking age." American Economic Journal: Applied Economics 1, no. 1 (2009): 164-82.

7. Decomposition methods

Oaxaca-Blinder and DFL decompositions. What do unions do?

DiNardo, John, Nicole M. Fortin, and Thomas Lemieux. Labor market institutions and the distribution of wages, 1973-1992: A semiparametric approach. Econometrica, 1996.

8. How to write a short empirical paper

There are two textbook references for the first part:

Pissarides C.A. (2000) Equilibrium Unemployment Theory, MIT Press. Hereafter P2000

Petrosky Nadeau Wasmer (2017) Labor, Credit and Goods Market: The Macroeconomic of  Search and Unemployment.  Hereafter PNW2017

 

There are two textbook references for the second part:

J.D. Angrist and J.S. Pischke, Mostly Harmless Econometrics: An Empiricist's Companion, Princeton University Press, 2009. Hereafter MHE.

D. Acemoglu and D. Autor, Lectures in Labor Economics, chapters 1-2 and 8-9. Hereafter LLE

The methods of teaching activity could change in according to the limitation imposed by the current health crisis. In any case the e-learning mode is guaranteed throughout the academic year.