Seminar in Macroeconomics II

  • Type: Seminar (S)
  • Semester: SS 2019
  • Time:

    24.04.2019
    (Kick-off meeting)
    14:00 - 17:00
    10.50, Raum 604

    24.07.2019
    10:00 - 18:00
    10.50, Raum 604

  • Lecturer:

    Prof. Dr. Martin Scheffel
    Dr. Christopher Krause
    Luca Pegorari

  • SWS: 2
  • Lv-No.: 2560401

Demographic Change and Public Policy

Description

In the last decades, macroeconomics has become more and more quantitatively oriented and computationally demanding. Research questions relating to the macroeconomic consequences of demographic change, rising government debt and changes to existing public pension systems often rely on the ability to solve increasingly complicated models. In this seminar, we focus on a widely-used framework to investigate these topics. In particular, using the Overlapping Generations (OLG) Model as a laboratory, you will learn numerical techniques that are used at the frontier of economic research.


Prerequisites

Previous knowledge of macroeconomics, general equilibrium theory or computational methods is helpful but not necessary as we provide you with the relevant material. The seminar is self-contained.


Modality

In the first meeting, on April 24, we will give a lecture on the basic OLG model and the necessary fundamental concepts. There will also be an introduction to Python, the software used throughout the seminar.

Students are required to form teams of two people. Each team will be assigned to a different topic that will be analyzed using the model from the lecture.

Your tasks will be to solve an assignment, write a report and give a presentation. The assignment will contain a number of programming exercises. The report should document in detail your implementation and describe your results. The presentation will be a 30 minutes talk based on your report, followed by an open discussion of about 15 minutes.

The language of this seminar is English: presentations, discussions and reports will have to be carried out in English.