Topics in Urban Economics

This seminar is offered in WS 22/23 for MSc and PhD students. It provides an overview of empirical research on cities from an economic perspective. We will be studying questions like: Why do cities exist, and why do some of them grow more than others? What happens when a city experiences a positive or negative economic shock, like a big company closing or entering? How do recent changes and policies like rent control laws or AirBnB affect rents? After completing this seminar, participants should know about the state of research in these areas, and should also have a good knowledge of micro-econometric methods commonly used to establish causality.

General information and prerequisites

The seminar is open to students in the MSc Economics and MSc Political Economy. Students should have a good background in econometrics and statistics.

Participants choose a paper from the list below. They are required to present the paper in class (roughly 35 minutes, the seminar presentations will take place online) and write a seminar paper  on it (maximum 12 pages excluding tables, references, and figures, font size 12, line spacing 1.5). The seminar paper should summarize the paper, provide a critical evaluation and a comparison with the related literature. The grade is based on both parts, the term paper counting 70% and the presentation 30%. However, to pass the seminar, a passing grade of 4.0 or better in each part is needed. Students will also be asked to do a short (5-minute) discussion of the presentation of another student. This will not be part of the grade, but is nonetheless mandatory.

Procedure

Students who have received a registration confirmation for the seminar  should pick three topics from the list below, rank them according to their preferences and email them to me at stephan.maurer (at) uni-konstanz.de. Topics are allocated on a “first come, first served” basis. The deadline for emailing me your preferences is September 20. After the enrolment period students cannot drop the seminar any more. No-shows receive a grade of 5.0.

The actual seminar starts with an online introductory meeting on October 27, from 10.00-11.30, using zoom. I will send the link the day before via ILIAS. Seminar presentations will take place on January 12 and 13, also online. The term paper needs to be submitted as a PDF via email by March 10.

Topics

Please see the course syllabus for the list of papers.