Distinguished Speakers Seminar Series
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To further enhance the quality of our courses, we organize regular webinars with a distinguished speakers who engage in a dialogue with our DLP faculty on current topics in their field.
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UPCOMING EVENT
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Mark Britnell
Global Healthcare Expert and Vice-Chairman KPMG (United Kingdom)
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Human: Solving the Global Workforce Crisis in Healthcare
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DATE: TBA
In Spring 2020, the CERGE-EI Foundation launched a pilot project to live stream bachelor’s level courses to universities across Eastern Europe and Central Asia in line with its mission to strengthen economics education across the region.
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The objective of the project is to provide courses which could be difficult for many institutions to offer, either because of insufficient student demand or because of a lack of faculty with the relevant expertise. The EU-based faculty (main instructors) are western-qualified and the courses are taught online in English. They are supported by faculty or PhD students at the participating institutions (local instructors): a longer-term objective of the project is to aid local capacity-building.
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The simultaneous participation of several universities fosters interaction between students in different countries, encourages comparison and motivation, enables students to experience an international classroom in a home environment, and avoids the problem of low enrollment at a particular institution.
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This exciting and ambitious project is funded by private donations. The Foundation is actively seeking additional funds to support its continued development.
​Fall 2023: Course Offerings
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Course Description: The course will introduce regression analysis and cover some of the most recent econometric techniques central to modern econometric practice. Successful students will gain a deeper understanding of the material discussed in other Distance Learning Program courses. At the end of this course, students will understand basic econometric concepts, basic estimation methods, and methods for testing statistical hypotheses. They will be able to apply standard methods of constructing econometric models, process statistical information, obtain statistically sound conclusions, and give meaningful interpretations to the results of the estimated econometric models. In addition, students will gain real data processing skills, using econometric packages for building and estimating econometric models in R.
Econometrics in a Nutshell
Main instructor:
Ella Sargsyan, Ph.D. candidate
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Course Description: Energy is a necessity of daily life and vital input to industry around the world. Energy also plays a central role in climate policy and geopolitics.
The course, including the viewpoints of economic markets and economic regulation, aims to inform about various energy system topics. The focus will be on the supply side of the market, targeting the main properties of fossil and renewable energy sources. While the economics (supply, demand, and pricing) is the focus, special attention is also given to the security and strategic value of the different energy sources.
Part of the course gives a broad background of knowledge on energy topics and issues. The other part uses economic tools and mathematical models to better understand the economic logic of energy. Such economic tools provide a way to systemize the abundance of information available on energy. This also helps to understand and appraise present policies regarding energy. Though our scope is general, attention is paid to some of the local settings for the EU, the Caucasus, Ukraine, Central Asia, and Russia.
Economics of Energy
Main instructor:
Silvester Van Koten, Ph.D.
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Course Description: This course introduces major concepts in the field of environmental economics. It is designed to help students understand theories related to natural resources and make use of microeconomic and statistical analysis. This course will also focus on valuation techniques for environmental goods used in the real world by analysts and policymakers. There is a growing demand in economics and public sectors for individuals with quantitative skills who can understand and apply these techniques, analyze results, and produce reports. By the end of this course, students will be able to analyze economic problems related to environmental goods using rigorous valuation techniques.
Environmental Economics
Main instructor:
Vladimir Otrachshenko, Ph.D.
Ethics and Finance
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Course Description: Ethics and finance: complementary or conflicting terms? In this highly interactive course, you will dig into the most notorious financial crimes to try and better understand what can possibly drive anyone of us into cheating investors and possibly ruining one’s career.
The course aims to raise your awareness and scrutiny to possible ethical challenges firms, managers and employees face when thinking about financial laws and enforcement, with an economic perspective and illustrated with real-life and up-to-date examples. The scope of unethical financial behaviors covers mostly market abuses, with price manipulation, insider trading, and communication of false information (in particular accounting frauds). This course should contribute to a better understanding of how ethical issues play a role in finance, how they may conflict with firms’ strategies, and how managers’ and employees’ decisions can impact financial markets and investors’ wealth.
The goal of this course is to prepare students for potential ethical dilemmas they might face along their careers. Upon successful completion of this course, students will be able to challenge and put into perspective the financial behavior of firms (financial institutions and listed firms in particular) in terms of ethics, from an economic perspective.
Main instructor:
Laure Sabine Marie de Batz de Trenquelléon, Ph.D.
From Correlation to Causation: Understanding the 2021 Nobel Prize
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Course Description: Did you know that men who shave their beards every day live longer? This statement is true in terms of correlation, but there is no causal relationship at all. In fact, empirical research in economics and social sciences faces the challenge of distinguishing correlation from causation. The course introduces concepts of causal analysis in a non-technical way. These concepts were awarded the 2021 Nobel Prize in Economics. The focus will be on research settings and designs. Figures and graphs will help to train students to understand the intuition behind the respective concepts. We will read and understand research papers in the field of long-run development and political economy that focus on specific concepts of causal empirical analysis.
Main instructor:
Christian Ochsner, Ph.D.
Innovation Economics
Main instructor:
Taras Hrendash, Ph.D.
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Course Description: This course will cover selected topics on the Economics of Innovation. It will help students to answer the most common questions about economic aspects of innovations: Why do firms innovate and why do they strive to be first in a race of research and development? How is the intellectual property of innovators protected and what are the costs and scope of such protection? Where can innovative start-up firms get money to finance their projects? How can employees be motivated to produce innovative outputs? How do innovative ideas spread and foster the creation of new knowledge?
The contents of this course are based on insights from macro- and microeconomics, contract theory, and corporate finance. Previous knowledge in these subjects will be beneficial but is not required.
Labor Economics
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Course Description: This course aims to provide students with the basics of labor economics. Theoretical models will be linked to real-life examples, making the course beneficial for subsequent studies and professional life. The tentative list of topics includes labor demand and supply, wages (equilibrium wages, hedonic wages, etc.), human capital, discrimination in the labor market, and unemployment.
Main instructor:
Jakub Grossmann, Ph.D.
Modeling Macroeconomics: How Macroeconomists Understand and Predict the World
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Course Description: The aim of this course is to acquaint students with the general ideas behind structural macroeconomic modeling and how it can be applied to better understand real-world data, whether GDP fluctuations, the evolution of lifetime income, or propensity to consume out of a monetary transfer. We will cover 2-3 basic macro models focusing on economic growth, the development of income and consumption inequality over the lifetime of individuals, and the differences in the behavior of poor vs. wealthy households. For each model, we will define the decision problems of agents in a model (households/firms/government), acquire basic intuition on how a model works, and then describe how a model is calibrated to real data. The discussion of each model will conclude with a debate on how it compares with the real world and what it fails to explain.
Main instructor:
Daniil Kashkarov, Ph.D. candidate
Public Economics
Main instructor:
Olga Popova, Ph.D.
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Course Description: This course covers the key concepts in public economics, a field of economics that studies the role of government in the economy. The course is designed to introduce seminal theoretical concepts and discuss the most recent empirical developments in public economics with the aim to understand: (i) why and how governments intervene in an economy, (ii) how individuals and firms react to these interventions, and (iii) what are the implications of those interventions for the overall welfare and economic development.
Spring 2023: Course Offerings
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Preterm
Econometrics in a Nutshell
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Course Description: The course will introduce regression analysis and cover some of the most recent econometric techniques central to modern econometric practice. Successful students will gain a deeper understanding of the material discussed in other Distance Learning Program courses. At the end of this course, students will understand basic econometric concepts, basic estimation methods, and methods for testing statistical hypotheses. They will be able to apply standard methods of constructing econometric models, process statistical information, obtain statistically sound conclusions, and give meaningful interpretations to the results of the estimated econometric models. In addition, students will gain real data processing skills, using econometric packages for building and estimating econometric models in R.
Main instructor:
Ella Sargsyan, Ph.D. candidate
Main Term
Behavioral Economics
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Course Description: This course aims to provide students with the basics of main behavioral theories and empirical methods commonly used to test theoretical predictions. The list of topics includes social preferences, time inconsistency, prospect theory, behavioral finance, attention and information acquisition, and other behavioral heuristics and biases. Upon successful completion of this course, students should be able to understand the conceptual framework of behavioral economics and its tools, recognize behavioral biases and apply insights from psychology when predicting or analyzing economic decision-making.
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Main instructor:
Aleksandr Levkun, Ph.D.
Climate Change Economics
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Course Description: Energy is a basic necessity of daily life and a vital input to industry in any society around the world. New technologies, especially renewable power generators such as wind and solar are changing the industry. Also, new climate policies have a growing influence on the economics and practical functioning of energy systems, especially, the electricity industry. Firstly, the course aims to give a deeper theoretical insight into economic externalities (such as global warming). A number of classical economic instruments are presented, such as Pigovean taxes, cap-and-trade programs, subsidies, and mandates. The theory addressed has broad applications, also in the field of public finance and public policy. Secondly, the course gives an overview of the economics of new potential decarbonization technologies, such as hydrogen, heat pumps, electric cars, and gas as transition fuel. Thirdly the most recent decarbonization developments will be discussed.
Main instructor:
Silvester van Koten, Ph.D.
Development Economics
Main instructor:
Martina Miotto, Ph.D
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Course Description: The goal of this course is to expose students to the newest developments in applied microeconomic research in development economics, particularly policy-oriented research. The topics covered will be especially close to the research agenda of the recent Nobel Prize Winners in Economics: Abhijit Banerjee, Esther Duflo, and Michael Kremer. A further focus of the course is on the study of infrastructure, firms, and labor markets in developing countries. Overall, the course offers a thorough understanding of current-day research in development, with a special angle on poverty reduction and private market policies. The goal is to enable students to identify promising research questions in these fields (e.g. for future studies), and to help students prepare for a career as a practitioner in government and non-government development organizations.
Education Economics
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Course Description: The human capital of the population is a key determinant of labor-market success and economic growth. This brings the economics of education to the core of understanding individual and societal economic prosperity. This course introduces students to the key concepts and major issues of economics of education, placing emphasis on current empirical research in the field. Topics include the basic theory of investments in education (human capital theory) and the role of early childhood education; the returns to education and the empirical problem of disentangling the return to education from the return to innate ability; the role of class size, peer effects, and school expenditure, etc. After the course, students are expected to be able to read, understand and discuss current research in the economics of education, as well as to contribute to the discussion about the current challenges in education.
Main instructor:
Miroslava Federicova, Ph.D.
Health Economics
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Course Description: This course provides an introduction to Health Economics. As such, it will cover the production and demand for healthcare, how the determinants of demand and supply affect the costs of various types of healthcare services, and the individual, family, and market investments in health. The field uses the tools of microeconomics and econometrics to examine both theoretically and empirically a number of topics, including the role of health insurance, healthcare in developing countries, and risky behavior.
Main instructor:
Eva Hromadkova, Ph.D.
Financial Markets
Main instructor:
Gabriela Kuvíková, Ph.D.
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Course Description: This course aims to provide a basic understanding of today’s changing landscape of financial markets and institutions with a broad scope and emphasis on general principles. Students will study the key fundamentals of financial markets and learn how financial markets and financial institutions work. We will discuss interest rates and their role in valuation, learn about efficient market hypothesis and exchange rate determination, explore money and capital markets, identify various players in the financial institutions industry, and take a closer look at risk management in financial institutions.
Game Theory
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Course Description: This course aims to acquaint students with the basics of game theory that allows studying strategic situations. By strategic situations or games, we understand general interactions in which actions of each agent affect the well-being of other agents. Game theory provides an analytic framework and a toolkit for studying such interactions and generating predictions about agents’ behavior. We will cover abstract game theoretic tools for studying static and dynamic games and consider applications of the main ideas from economics and political economy.
Main instructor:
Aleksandr Levkun, Ph.D.
Introduction to Data Science
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Course Description: This course provides an introduction to data science as a profession and focuses on the theoretical methodologies of the most widely applied machine learning models. The main topics covered include data preparation (data mining, cleaning, and exploring strategies), statistical modeling with the application of appropriate machine learning methodologies (data segmentation, predictive analytics), and mathematical evaluation (test-train split and accuracy measures).
Main instructor:
Vahan Sargsyan, Ph.D.
Models in International Trade
Main instructor:
Vilém Semerák, Ph.D.
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Course Description: This course focuses on applied empirical analysis of trade flows and of effects of trade policies. It is not a course in pure trade theory and we are not going to discuss delicate details of e.g. Melitz model; instead, we are going to focus on what needs to be done if we want to provide some reliable facts on actual trade flows and interesting and evidence-based insight into policy-related issues. We will start with rather traditional indicators and index-based analysis of international trade data, and then we will continue to newer and more complex approaches which will also include gravity models, network analysis, or partial equilibrium simulations of the effects of changes in import tariffs. The course will be based on a hands-on approach to learning. Throughout the course, we will be using actual and up-to-date data on trade flows and students will be calculating indicators and estimating results relevant to current discussions about international trade. Each section will be concluded with a practical demonstration of the use of the methods and concepts.