ECO-4203 : Quantitative economic history

Teacher: Jean-Pascal BASSINO

The course consists in 12 sessions of two 2 hours each. Each session consists in a lecture followed by one or two student presentations and discussions, each one based on an academic paper (with slides). Slides that will be used for the lectures and PDF copies of the academic papers to be discussed will be circulated in advance.

The list of papers to be presented will be circulated in the first session. For the presentation, each student must place himself in the position of the author of the paper. The objective is to convince the audience on different points:

• The question is relevant and the hypotheses are sound
• The paper is well related to the existing literature and could fill a knowledge gap
• The methods and data used are appropriate, and the data sources are clearly presented
• The results appear robust and relevant

The presentation of the paper does not need to be structured in the same way as the original paper. In the final part of the presentation, the student should change role and act as referee by listing a number of limitations of the paper (if any) and by considering possible additional investigations.

• The course evaluation has three components:
• The first component is the presentation of a paper (oral presentation in English based on a PPT 40%)
• The second component is a short report presenting the same paper in French (30%)
• The third component is a short report presenting a second paper in French (30%)