This course introduces basic economic concepts and theories. Beginning with microeconomics, the course starts with the topics of supply and demand, markets, and behavioral economics before moving on to the key macroeconomic concepts of national accounts, the labor market, trade, and monetary policy.

We discuss research on inequality in different areas of economics. Possible topics include distributional national accounts, heterogeneous returns, inheritances, intergenerational mobility, gender inequality in the labor market (topics will also be decided upon depending on the students' interests). Students will present a paper and critically comment on it (as if they would referee the paper).

Most policy relevant research questions in the social sciences face the same challenge: How can we identify a causal impact of one variable on another when we cannot use a controlled experiment? This course will teach program evaluation methods for causal analysis based on non-experimental (i.e. observational) data, derive the underlying theory and discuss recent applications.