Empirical Research Seminar in Institutional Economics WiSe 23/24

Dr. Valentin Klotzbücher

In this course, students will learn how to handle, visualize and analyze conflict data, and how to produce high-quality, reproducible documents to effectively communicate empirical results. Previous experience with statistical software or advanced econometrics is not required.

Following an introduction to “literate programming” with R and Quarto, we will focus on how to construct meaningful measures from available data and discuss potential sources of bias across data sources. For the first assignment, each student will focus on a different data set (covering a particular type of conflict/a geographic region) and prepare a short report.

In the second part, we will focus on statistical methods and their application to a widely discussed question: Does climate change cause conflict? What is the role of economic conditions and political institutions in this complex relationship? All seminar participants will work with the data collected in the AfroGrid (Schon & Koren, 2022), but focus on different extensions (measures of climate change/regions) for the second take-home assignment. In the block seminar in January 2024, students present their findings.

Deadline for the seminar application is October 15, 2023. 

Further information available here.