The main goal of the course is to give endow students with both state-of-the art tools and expose them to the current debates in the study of firms. The course can be useful both to continue for a PhD and to pursue a professional careers in private or public research centers dealing with firm analysis and regulation.

Acquisition of empirical analysis skills

The class will focus on industry dynamics and productivity. In the first part of the class we will learn to estimate production functions. We will then cover some applications of the techniques learned: productivity in imperfectly competitive markets, misallocation, measuring markups with production data, IT and productivity, matched employer-employee data, corporate governance, local development.

“Microeconometrics: Methods and Applications”, A. Colin Cameron, Pravin K. Trivedi “Mostly Harmless Econometrics”, J. D. Angrist and J.-S. Pischke

Classes

The grade will be based on class participation (including the presentation of a paper) and a final exam. I will also assign two problem sets during the class.

No final thesis is required