Overview

Teaching at the Chair of applied macroeconomics covers all areas of macroeconomics. Particularly, analyses of the relationships in the overall economy are conducted, e.g. of income, inflation and unemployment, and the influence economic policy on the overall economy is examined.

Bachelor

In the bachelor program the course “Introduction to Macroeconomics” gives you an insight to the theoretical models to explain business cycles, meaning the economic ups and downs during booms and recessions, and economic growth. Therefore, the role of money, monetary policy and financial markets, taxes and public expenditure, investments and innovations will be investigated. The course “Applied macroeconomics” for advanced bachelor students is built on the basics and sets his focus on international macroeconomics and the analysis of labour markets. Topics of this course include currencies and international financial markets, economic policy in open economies, unemployment and labour market institutions. Moreover, the chair offers seminars on changing topics and the possibility of writing a bachelor thesis in the area of macroeconomics.

Master

For students in the masters program the Chair offers the course “Advanced Macroeconomics”. In this course dynamic macroeconomic models based on microeconomic decisions are discussed. Applications include economic growth (e.g. endogenous growth) and in the context of business cycles (e.g. RBC theory). In the subsequent course “Quantitative Macroeconomics” these models are will be extended and matched with data. For this purpose, a newkeynesian DSGE model for the analysis of inflation and monetary and fiscal policy will be introduced. Using this model methods of simulation and forecasting (e.g. structural vectorautoregression) are discussed to verify the model with data. This is done using the software Matlab. The course “Labour Economics” deals with the question how the labour market differs from other markets and how this fact influences the economic analysis and labour market policies. Topics that are addressed contain search in the labour market, wages and unemployment. Among others the search and matching as the macroeconomic perspective on the labour market is discussed. Application are implemented in Stata and Matlab. Moreover, the chair offers several seminars on different topics and guidance in writing a master thesis.

Job perspectives

Macroeconomic expertise is asked for in central and commercial banks, ministries and the public administration, in the consultancies of politics and enterprises, insurance companies and international institutions. Of course, a career in research at universities or research institutions is also possible.

Further information can be found here:

• Lectures
• Theses