Labor Economics I

The purpose of the course is to provide students with theoretical and empirical tools enabling them to develop a research project in labor economics. Students will become familiar with the theories and methods used by labor economists and will have the opportunity to apply them to topics of interest. The first part of the course is designed to provide a broad overview of theoretical models and empirical methods in the most traditional topics of labor economics. Topics to be covered include labour supply and family coordination of time allocation, labour demand, minimum wages, labour market equilibrium and wage structure. The second part of the course will focus on human capital investment, migration, discrimination in the labor market and fertility decisions. For each topic, theoretical contributions are proposed and compared to existing empirical evidence, in order to provide students interested in working on empirical analyses with a theoretical framework.