thesis ideas for economics

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Economics Undergraduate Honors Theses

Examples of honors theses written by economics undergraduate students.

Posted with permission of the author. © 2019-2022 by the individual author. All rights reserved.

• "The Causal Effect of ACA Subsidies on Insurance Coverage Status Among California Adults"  - William Vereyken
• "Economic Impacts of Immigration Detention Centers Built Between 1990-2016 on U.S. Commuting Zones"  - Ekaterina Yudina

Spring/Summer 2022

• "The Impact of Indiv. Mandate on High-Income, Non-elderly Indiv. Health Insurance Coverage Rates and Racial/Ethnic Disparities"  - YeJin Ahn
• "An Economic Analysis of the 1997 Amhara Land Redistribution in Ethiopia"  - Ezana Anley
• "Affirmative Action's Effect on Educational and Wage Outcomes for Underrepresented Minorities"  - Vishnu G. Arul
• "Are the Effects of Racism Really That Black and White? A Study on the Effect Racism Has on the Productivity of Black   Footballers in the Premier League"  - Advik Banerjee
• "An Empirical Analysis of Industrial Concentration and Prices: Can We Blame Inflation on Corporate Greed?"  - Anton Bobrov
• "Tax Revenue Cyclicality and Income Inequality: Evidence from U.S. Counties From 1989 to 2019"  - Yiyang Chen
• "The Impact of Economic Opportunities on African American Migration Patterns in Oakland"  - Fernando Cheung
• "Impact of Tech Companies on Wages in the Local Economy"  - Niki Collette
• "Warm Welcome: Evidence for Weather-based Projection Bias in College Choice"  - Maria Cullen
• "Impact of the Belt and Road Initiative on Bilateral Trade with China"  - Pedro de Marcos
• "Renaissance of the Black Homeowner: Impact Evaluation of Michigan's Renaissance Zones"  - Rupsha Debnath
• "Lockdown Blues: The Effect of Social Norms on the Psychological Cost of Unemployment During the COVID-19 Pandemic"  - Dylan Hallahan
• "How Education Affects Health Outcomes Across Genders"  - Jessica Li
• "Is Increasing Diversity Inclusion Effective in Improving Companies' Performance in the Financial Services Industry?"  - Miranda Li
• "The Future Financial Status of the Social Security Program"  - Chloe Manouchehri
• "Does Recreational Marijuana Legalization Affect Hard-Drug Use? - Evidence from Cocaine Prevalence and Treatment Admissions"  - Arthur Weiss
• "Relationship Between Economic Status and Money Spent on Private Education Leading to Economic Inequality in South Korea"  - Jiho Lee
• "The Impact of Migrant Remittances on Rural Labor Supply: Evidence from Nepal"  - Amanda Wong
• "Confirmation Bias: The Role of Messages and Messengers"  - Hongyu (Randol) Yao

Spring 2021

• "Gender Equality and Economic Growth: Solving the Asian Puzzle"  - Zoya Ali
• "Women in STEM: Moving Up or Falling Off the Academic Career Ladder?"  - Sophia J. Bai
• "Time Dependence in Okun's Law at the State Level" - Sarah Baig
• "Labor Regulation and the Impact on Firm Behavior in India" - Vatsal Bajaj
• "Gender Representation in Academia: Evidence from the Italian Education System Reform" - Oyundari Batbayar
• "Money & Marriage on the Elementary Mind: A High-Level Analysis of Inequitable Child Development in LA County" - Matthew J. Chang
• "Unanticipated Unemployment Rate News on the Stock Market" - David Chi
• "Should Physicians Be More Collaborative? Determining the Relationship Between Patient Participation and Treatment Plan Confidence Across a Spectrum of Illness Severity in the State of California" - Saif Chowdhury
• "Modeling Optimal Investment and Greenhouse Gas Abatement in the Presence of Technology Spillovers" - Sabrina Chui
• "Understanding the Influence of Marginal Income Tax Rates on Retirement Investment Habits"  - Daniel Cohen
• "Infrastructure in India's Internal War: A District-Level Analysis of the Naxalite-Maoist Conflict" - Krunal Desai
• "Do Eucalyptus Trees Increase Wildfires?"  - Lila Englander
• "Understanding the Labor Outcomes of Hurricane Sandy" - Kevin Fang
• "Does TikTok Show Viewers the Content Relevant to them?" - Ekaterina Fedorova
• "The Impact of the Affordable Care Act Dependent Care Provision on Long-term Young Adult Labor Market Choices" - Anne Fogarty
• "Orchestra Sex Disparity: Experimental Evidence from Audience Members" - Richard Gong
• "The Big Three Medical Price Indexes: A Comparative Review and Analysis"  - Robert Hovakimyan
• "Effect of Value-Added-Services on Customer Reviews in a Platform Marketplace" - Shankar Krishnan
• "COVID19 Recession: Gender Layoff Gap Explodes" - Ember Lin-Sperry
• "The Gender Wage Gap in China: Learning from Recent Longitudinal Data" - Donghe Lyu
• "Local Graduation Policies as a Tool for Increasing College Eligibility: Evidence from Los Angeles" - Dan L. Ma
• "Trust in Government and Lockdown Compliance in Sub-Saharan Africa" - Charles McMurry
• "I Do (or Don't): The Impact of Same-Sex Marriage Laws on International Tourism" - Oliver McNeil
• "International Shipping Consequences of a Navigable Arctic" - Jack Melin
• "Investigating Dollar Invoicing Trends Using United Kingdom Export Data" - Aneesh Nathani
• "Micro-Level Impact of Initial Public Offerings on Bay Area Housing Inflation" - Mina Nezam-Mafi
• "Explaining EU's Oil Dependency Through the Response of the Portuguese Sector Indexes to Brent Oil Prices Fluctuations" - Pedro S. Nunes
• "Dynamic Incentives and Effort Provision in Professional Tennis Tournaments" - Ruiwen Pan
• "Examining the Effects of Minimum Wage Laws on Part-Time Employment" - Odysseus Pyrinis
• "The Great Indian Identity Crisis? Exclusions & Intersectionality in the Indian Aadhaar System" - Aditi Ramakrishnan
• "The 'Clutch Gene' Myth: An Analysis of Late-Game Shooting Performance in the NBA"  - Can Sarioz
• "Estimating the Impact of Artificial Intelligence on Jobs Within the Healthcare Industry" - Sidharth Satya
• "Factors Influencing Telehealth Utilization: Evidence from California" - Emily Schultz
• "Cash and Conflict: Evidence from the Indian Banknote Demonetization" - Nachiket Shah
• "Determinants of the Number of Anti-Government Demonstrations: Evidence from OECD Countries" - Nina Singiri
• "Hygiene Heroes: A Process Evaluation of Promoting Hygiene Practices in Tamil Nadu Schools" - Malika Sugathapala
• "Exploring the Labour Patterns of Women and Mothers Through the COVID-19 Pandemic: The Impact of School Closures and a New Kind of Recession"  - Renee Isabel Utter
• "How Have Socioeconomic Achievement Determinants Changed in the Past Decade for First-Generation Chinese Immigrants in the U.S." - Haolin Wang
• "The Impact of Quarantining on School Enrollment: Evidence from the Ebola Epidemic in Sierra Leone" - David Willigrod
• "Weeding out Needy Households and Welcoming the Better Off? Impacts of Transactional Barriers on SNAP Participation Rates" - Kevin Woo
• "Are Soccer Teams Being Inefficient? An Analysis of Sunk Cost Fallacy and Recency Bias Using Transfer Fee" - Junru Lyu
• "The Effects of Access to Family Planning Facilities on Female Labor Market Outcomes"  - Marcus Sander
• "Macroeconomic Volatility at the Zero Lower Bound: Evidence from the OECD" - Anthony Swaminathan
• "How are Society's Conditions and Demographics Related to the Popularity of Chief Executive Carrie Lam  and the Hong Kong Government"  - Peter To

Spring/Summer 2020

• "Parental Involvement: The Differential Impacts of Consent and Notice Requirements for Minors' Abortions" - Angela Ames
• "Examining Local Price Levels and Income Distribution Over Time" - Josh Archer
• "Estimating the Effect of Grandparent Death on Fertility" - Jason Chen
• "Democracy in the Face of COVID-19: Have Less Democratic Countries Been More Effective at Preventing the Spread of This Pandemic ?" - Yi Chen
• "Understanding the Effects of Conditional Cash Transfers on Indigenous People in Mexico" - Arushi Desai
• "Microfinance and Payday Lending: Are they Solving a Problem or Creating One?" - Sophia Faulkner
• "The Risk-Taking Channel of Monetary Policy and Foreign Banks" - Noah Forougi
• "Ride of Die? Metropolitan Bikeshare Systems and Pollution" - Sean Furuta
• "Internet's Important Involvement in Information Industry Integration in Idaho, Iowa, Illinois, Indiana (and others): How the emerging internet affected the economic geography of the information industry" - Keming (Alex) Gao
• "The Relationship between Economic Crises and Long-Run Wealth Inequality" - Renuka Garg
• "Voter Bias in the Associated Press College Football Poll : Reconducting a 2009 study with new data in a $1 Billion-dollar industry that has seen significant changes in the past decade"  - Brent Hensley
• "Monopsony Exploitation in Major League Baseball: Using Wins Above Replacement to Estimate Marginal Revenue Product" - Jacob C. Hyman
• "The Relationship Between Currency Substitution and Exchange Rate Volatility" - Jewon Ju
• "Efficiency, Bias, and Decisions: Observations from a Sports Betting Exchange" - Alexander Kan
• "The Effect of Medicaid Expansion on Substance Use Disorder Treatment Utilization: Evidence from the Affordable Care Act" - Christy Kang
• "Analyzing the Relationship between Personal Income Tax Progressivity and Income Inequality" - Gevorg Khandamiryan
• "The Effects of Occupancy Taxes on the Short-Term Rental Market: Evidence from Boston" - Alan Liang
• "Corporate Types and Bank Lending in Contractionary Era: Evidence from Chinese Listed Companies" - Zishen Liu
• "Financial Constraints on Student Learning: An Analysis of How Financial Stress Influences Cognitive Function in Children" - Simone Matecna
• "The Effect of Workplace Inspections on Employment and Sales - A Regression Discontinuity Analysis" - Jeseo Park
• "Lending Sociodynamics, Economic Instability, and the U.S. Farm Credit Crisis" - Erfan Samaei
• "The Effect of Intangible Assets on Value Added: Evidence from microdata across small and large firms in Europe" - Tamara Sequeira
• "Price Efficiency Differences Between Public and Private Utilities: An Empirical Analysis of US Electric Utilities" - Yechan Shin
• "Effect of Campus Shootings on Academic Achievement: Examination of 2014 Isla Vista Killings" - Min Joo (Julie) Song
• "First-Degree Price Discrimination: Evidence from Informal Markets in India" - Rishab Srivastava
• "Who Benefits From Gentrification? A Case Study of Oregon Public High Schools" - Namrata Subramanian
• "Estimating the Economic Impacts of Wealth Taxation in France" - Jeffrey Suzuki
• "Transit-Oriented Development or Transit-Oriented Displacement? Evaluating the Sorting Effect of Public Transportation in Los Angeles County" - Yeeling Tse
• "How State Abortion Policy Restrictiveness is Associated with Unintended Pregnancy Outcomes in the United States from 2014-2018" - Ruhee Wadhwania
• "Global Food Security and the El Niño-Southern Oscillation"  - Aidan Wang
• "The Relationship Between Pharmaceutical R&D Spending and NME Development" - Taylor Wang
• "The Role of Individual Risk Attitude in Occupational Inheritance" - Yi Wang
• "Labor Market Segmentation: Evidence from U.S. Janitorial Jobs Advertised in English and Spanish" - Zijun Xu
• "Bias on the Brain: How Patient Gender Influences Use of Emergency Room Diagnostic Imaging" - Abigail Zhong
• "Age Effects, Irrationality and Excessive Risk-Taking in Supposedly Expert Agents" - William Aldred
• "Pricing Disparities for Minority Communities in Chicago: Rideshares and Taxis" - Matthew Cleveland
• "Where My Negros At? Evaluating the Effects of Banning Affirmative Action on Black College Enrollment" - Ellie Koepplinger
• "Race and Recession: How Minorities May Affect Downturns" - Alexander Szarka
• "Understanding the Effects of Canadian International Food Aid on Production and Trade" - Patrick D. Tagari
• "Urban Property Rights and Labor Supply in Peru: Heterogeneity Analysis by Gender and Educational Attainment" - Juan Sebastián Rozo Vásquez
• "Effect of High-Speed Rail on City Tourism Revenue in China: A Perspective on Spatial Connectivity" - Lingyun Xiao

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Economics Dissertation Topics

Published by Alvin Nicolas at January 11th, 2023 , Revised On April 16, 2024

The field of economics has changed entirely in recent times. Today, the field holds an extremely important place in every economy, with individual choices, spending, borrowing, production, occupations, markets, trading, employment, and a lot more being predicted and planned by economists.

Today, economists view economics from a modern and slightly different perspective than traditional economics. Different approaches in economics include perspectives like anthropology, sociology, geography, and various institutions.

Studying economics involving these perspectives provides a clearer view of the issues and problems related to the modern economic world. In contrast, focusing on the traditional economic approaches while selecting a topic will result in vague outcomes according to modern economics.

The most difficult task with respect to economics dissertations involves the  collection of data . Mostly the data required by the researcher must be in quantitative form. However, once data is collected, the researcher can focus on performing the analysis.

There are a number of economic perspectives that can be studied in detail. As your final project, you will want to select the most recent and relevant economics topic for your dissertation.

To help you get started with brainstorming for economics topic ideas, we have developed a list of the latest topics that can be used for writing your economics dissertation.

These topics have been developed by PhD-qualified writers of our team , so you can trust to use these topics for drafting your dissertation.

You may also want to start your dissertation by requesting  a brief research proposal  from our writers on any of these topics, which includes an  introduction  to the problem,  research question , aim and objectives,  literature review  along with the proposed  methodology  of research to be conducted.  Let us know  if you need any help in getting started.

Check our  example dissertations to get an idea of  how to structure your dissertation .

You can review step by step guide on how to write your dissertation.

Check our  example dissertation to get an idea of  how to structure your dissertation .

2024 Economics Dissertation Topics

Topic 1: the influence of price and brand on consumer preference during an economic recession: a case of the clothing market in greece.

Research Aim: The research will aim to examine the impact of prices and brands on consumer buying behaviour during an economic recession in Greece’s clothing market. During an economic crisis, not all types of products suffer the same consequences. During a recession, people are more sensible in their buying decisions, and they frequently continue to choose known product brands that meet their demands. The study will look at the impact of the recession on consumer purchasing preferences, taking into account variations in spending on various apparel brands based on price.

Topic 2: The financial and non-financial support of the family members in the growth of a successful entrepreneurship

Research Aim: The research will aim to investigate the importance of financial and non-financial support of family members in the growth of successful entrepreneurship. Entrepreneurship is a driving force in economic growth, social transformation, and organizational change. Private businesses (entrepreneurship) not only support a state’s social and economic growth but it also develops intellectual competition and innovation. Family members who are involved in business ventures can influence individuals’ goals to start new businesses, and they can also be considered as a means of economic and motivational strength.

Topic 3: The impact of transaction cost on economic development

Research Aim: The research will aim to explore the impact of transaction cost on the economic development of a country. The study will try to find the impact by using different methods and analyses. This article will investigate the difficulties of economic growth as they relate to transaction costs and how the latter produce various sorts of market failures. The study also explores several major contributions to the field of economic development, including market failure and growth barriers. Alternative perspectives on the failure of government and the market-government duality will also be examined.

Topic 4: What effect does oil price fluctuation have on business activity in oil-importing and exporting states?

Research Aim: The research will aim to find the influence of oil rate fluctuation on businesses of oil-importing and exporting countries. Change has a significant influence on the production costs of oil-importing countries and changes in pricing levels changes. At the same time, oil price variations have a significant impact on energy export profits and government budget revenues in energy-exporting economies.

Topic 5: The impact of gender inequality on work productivity and economic growth: A case study on developing countries

Research Aim: The research will aim to find the impact of gender inequality on work productivity and economic growth in developing countries. Gender inequality is not solely a concern in developing countries. Males earn more than women in practically every society. Differences in health, education, and negotiating power within marriage, on the other hand, tend to be bigger in countries with low Per capita income. Gender inequality in the office contributes to females’ lower socio-economic standing. Furthermore, such gender inequality may be associated with human resource rules and human resource related decision-making.

Topic 6: Research to identify the impacts of Coronavirus on the economy

Research Aim: This study will focus on identifying the impacts of coronavirus on the global economy.

Topic 7: Research to study the impacts of Coronavirus on the real estate sector

Research Aim: This research aims at identifying the impacts of coronavirus on the real estate sector. Is real estate a better option for investment during COVID-19?

Topic 8: Research to study the impacts of Coronavirus on the stock market

Research Aim: This research aims at identifying the impacts of coronavirus on the stock market.

Topic 9: Research to identify the impacts of Coronavirus on banking and the future of banking after the pandemic

Research Aim: This research aims at identifying the impacts of coronavirus on banking and the future of banking after the pandemic. What are the predictions? What challenges may come across? How to overcome those challenges?

Dissertation Topics on Economics 2023

Topic 1: economic expansion in bioenergy: a case study.

Research Aim: This research aims to conduct a case study on the economic expansion in bioenergy

Topic 2: Factors responsible for job creation and job destruction in the UK

Research Aim: This research aims to identify the factors responsible for job creation and job destruction in the UK.

Topic 3: Impacts of wars on the economy of both nations

Research Aim: This research aims to address how do wars impact the economy of both nations?

Topic 4: The role of banks in the economy of a country

Research Aim:  This research aims to highlight the role of Banks in the economy of a country. Students can choose any country to conduct the study.

Topic 5: Is an unhealthy country considered an emerging country?

Research Aim:  This research will answer the question: Is an unhealthy country considered a poor country?

Dissertation Topics Related to Economic Geography

Economic geography studies human economic activities with respect to various conditions such as location, distribution, production, consumption, exchange of resources, etc. Thus, studying the availability of all these resources, their development, and utilization is the main subject matter of economic geography.

In addition to studying these resources and their relationship with human economic activities, economic geography also helps study the interaction of these resources and variables with respect to nature and economic activities.

Economic geography is studied within different regions and localities in order to assess various human economic activities. Here are some economic geography dissertation topics to help you explore this field.

Topic 1: Role of local ethics and culture in shaping entrepreneurial economic development in various businesses.

Research Aim: This study will talk about the role of culture and ethics in shaping economic entrepreneurial attitudes in different fields of business.

Topic 2: Diversity in entrepreneurial approaches brought up by emigrants in the economics of a place: A critical analysis

Research Aim: This research will discuss whether entrepreneurial approaches be exported when emigrants move to a new place.

Topic 3: Assessing factors involved in facilitating knowledge transfer in a specific locality or place

Research Aim: This research will understand the various factors that play a role in transferring knowledge from one place or locality to another.

Topic 4: Economic opportunities provided within local boundaries. A case study of any specific area

Research Aim: This study will talk about the economic opportunities provided by local boundaries. This dissertation can be customised according to an area/region of your choice.

Topic 5: To discuss the role of the “European regional policy” in shaping or modifying places in the UK

Research Aim: This study will talk about the role of European regional policy in shaping and modifying UK places.

Topic 6: Location of top IT firms in the UK, the role of location on economics linked to a particular firm

Research Aim: This study will assess the economic geography of top IT firms in the UK that are linked to different firms.

Topic 7: Causes of regional diversity. Analysis and comparison between the richest and poorest places of the UK

Research Aim: This will be a comparative study between the richest and poorest places in the UK based on regional diversity.

Topic 8: Economics and expansion in bioenergy: A Case Study

Research Aim: This study will talk about economics and expansion in bioenergy, and a specific case will be under analysis.

Topic 9: Economic modifications faced by emigrants, causes and impacts

Research Aim: This research will talk about the various economic modifications that emigrants have to face and will also assess its causes and impacts.

Topic 16: A critical analysis of diversity in entrepreneurial attitudes in rural and urban areas

Research Aim: This will be a critical study that will assess diversity in entrepreneurial attitudes in both rural and urban areas.

How Can ResearchProspect Help?

ResearchProspect writers can send several custom topic ideas to your email address. Once you have chosen a topic that suits your needs and interests, you can order for our dissertation outline service which will include a brief introduction to the topic, research questions , literature review , methodology , expected results , and conclusion . The dissertation outline will enable you to review the quality of our work before placing the order for our full dissertation writing service!

Dissertation Topics on Microeconomics

This branch of economics deals with economic perspectives on an individual level. It takes into account the allocation of various resources that are limited in nature. Different theories of microeconomics can be applied to markets where different products are bought and sold out.

In order to complete your graduation program, you will have to select the right economics topic that not only interests you but is relevant in today’s world. The suggested topics for you to choose from are listed below:

Topic 1: Difference in consumer attitudes in the UK over the past 15 years – Critical analysis of customer behaviour trends.

Research Aim: This research will compare the consumer attitude in the UK over the past 15 years and will study the trends.

Topic 2: Understanding to what extent does the concept of oligopoly exists in markets of the UK – A critical analysis

Research Aim: This study will first talk about oligopoly, and will then build and critically discuss how this concept exists in the UK market.

Topic 3: Laws and their impact on British firms.

Research Aim: This study will talk about the various laws in the UK that have an impact on various industries as a whole.

Topic 4: “European regional policy” and its effects on British small and medium enterprises

Research Aim: This research will study the European regional policy and the impacts this has on SMEs in the UK.

Topic 5: To discuss specific traits of the UK innovation organisation

Research Aim:  This research will understand the various traits of UK organisations that innovate.

Topic 6: Study of the characteristics of the energy market in the UK – A microeconomic approach

Research Aim: This study will undertake a microeconomic approach in order to understand the characteristics of the energy market in the UK.

Topic 7: Common traits of the top internet technology firms in the US – Analysis of the approaches adopted by different successful technology firms

Research Aim: This research will talk about the various traits of leading internet firms in the US and will analyse their different approaches

Topic 8: How is the concept of “economic convergence” linked to salary levels in the United States? – A critical analysis

Research Aim: This study will critically discuss economic convergence and how it is linked to salary levels in the US.

Topic 9: A Discussion on the use and role of various “pricing models” in making investment decisions.

Research Aim: This research will analyze the various pricing models that companies use to make decisions with respect to their investment.

Topic 10: Analysing salary inequalities in the United States and the forces behind such inequalities? – A Critical analysis

Research Aim: This study will talk about an important issue, i.e., salary inequalities in the US, and will also discuss the various forces that drive such inequalities.

Dissertation Topics on Employment Economics

Employment is a very important aspect that is studied in economics. Employment is interconnected with other academic subjects as well and affects people’s finances, which further determines their type of relationship with their environment or society.

Moreover, with the passage of time, technological advancements in various fields have impacted the labor market, which directly influenced the employment rate.  Dissertation topics  related to the field of employment economics are listed as under:

Topic 1: Factors responsible for the job creation and job destruction in the United Kingdom

Research Aim: This research will talk about the different factors that are responsible for job creation and destruction in the United Kingdom.

Topic 2: Analysing to what extent the concept of self-employment prevails in the United Kingdom – Discuss the factors that determine it

Research Aim: This research will determine the extent to which the concept of self-employment prevails in the UK. Furthermore, the factors determining self-employment will also be explored.

Topic 3: Link between minimum wages and British employment. A critical analysis

Research Aim: This study will critically analyze the link between wages minimum wages and employment in Britain.

Topic 4: Understanding In what ways technological advancements have paved the way for a rise in British employment levels

Research Aim: This research will talk about the various ways through which technological advancements have helped increase employment in the British economy.

Topic 5: Exploring the value of labour in the United Kingdom– Skilled or unskilled labour? A Critical Analysis

Research Aim: This study will talk about the value of both types of labour, skilled and unskilled, in the UK. A critical analysis will be conducted as to which type of labour is more in demand in the economic system.

Topic 6: Analysing the levels and prevalence of self-employment in various parts of Europe. An Analysis of the United Kingdom

Research Aim: This research will discuss and analyse the levels and prevalence of self-employment in various parts across Europe. Special attention will be given to the UK in the study to understand the self-employment system.

Topic 7: In what ways does immigration affects British employment levels and productivity? Discuss

Research Aim: This research will talk about the various ways through which immigration affects British employment levels and productivity.

Topic 8: How can professional training impact British employment? Discuss

Research Aim: This study will talk about the impact of professional training on employment in the UK. The research will discuss if the impact was negative or positive.

Topic 9: Analysing the impact of gender inequality in employment on economic growth in the UK

Research Aim: This research will analyse the impact of gender inequality in employment on economic growth in the UK.

Topic 10: Economic productivity and Innovation – Are they both related? A study of the UK services industry

Research Aim: This research will help understand the relationship (if any) between economic productivity and innovation. The UK Services industry will be analyzed.

Dissertation Topics on Economic Sociology

This field refers to the study of sociological aspects from an economic perspective. Social networks are also one of the more important features in the economic world because they can contribute greatly to promoting a particular brand.

Different social gatherings are a source to highlight a particular industry, firm, and even a private setup. They can contribute greatly to building successful businesses. Following are some economic sociology dissertation topics for you to choose from:

Topic 1: Exploring Innovation Activities for the promotion of a particular firm/industry/brand

Research Aim: This research will talk about all the innovative activities that take place while promoting a brand or a company in an industry. This topic can be customised according to a brand/company of your choosing.

Topic 2: Understanding the role of families in funding a particular firm

Research Aim: This research will talk about the family funding of businesses, the whole process and how it takes place. You can choose an industry of your choice to base your dissertation on.

Topic 3: Can a blend of different cultures contribute to increasing the level of productivity? Evidence from a UK firm

Research Aim : This research will discuss how various cultures contribute to increasing productivity levels. A UK firm will be chosen for this research.

Topic 4: Social capital plays its role in the rural areas in the UK – A critical analysis

Research Aim: This research will talk about social capital and its role in the rural areas of the UK.

Topic 5: Youth as one of the biggest supports in the promotion of economic agents

Research Aim: This research will help understand the relationship (if any) between economic productivity and innovation. The UK services industry will be analysed.

Topic 6: Exploring the role of university networks in shaping entrepreneurial behaviours and actions

Research Aim: This study will help explore the role of university networks in shaping entrepreneurial actions and behaviours.

Topic 43: Role of social entrepreneurship in the United Kingdom

Research Aim: This study will talk about the role of social entrepreneurship in the UK and how it has emerged.

Topic 8: Diverse culture and productivity enhancement – How are the two related?

Research Aim: This study will talk about whether diverse culture has an impact on productivity enhancement in the UK or not.

Topic 9: Exploring the Impact of social networks on the success of Brands

Research Aim: This study will talk about the impact of social networks on the success of brands and how they impact businesses. You can choose a brand for this dissertation.

Topic 10: Understanding the ‘peer’ factor in setting up businesses

Research Aim: Setting up a business involves various factors, and an essential one is a support from peers. This research will explore this aspect of support when starting a business and the impact it has.

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Dissertation Topics on Institutional Economics

Institutional economics helps in understanding the role of institutions in shaping economic behaviour. Certain institutions promote certain values, beliefs and norms, and they impact the public in a certain way.

These institutions can affect the economics of a certain region and help shape economic life and behaviour. Institutional economics is still an emerging field. Following are some institutional economics dissertation topics that you can base your dissertation on.

Topic 1: Assessing the factors behind the power of a successful firm. How is it built?

Research Aim: This research will discuss the various factors that help companies build power in the industry and impact the economy.

Topic 2: Analysing the impact of cultural mix on the organisation of firms in the United Kingdom

Research Aim: This study will analyse the impact of diverse cultures on organisations in the UK.

Topic 3: Evaluating the role of bureaucracy in the productivity levels of the United Kingdom

Research Aim: This research will help in evaluating the role of bureaucracy on productivity levels in the UK.

Topic 4: Understanding various methods to ensure economic efficiency in the property markets of the United Kingdom

Research Aim: This study will understand the different ways through which economic efficiency is ensured in the UK property markets.

Topic 5: Impacts of transaction costs on economic development?

Research Aim: This research will evaluate how economic development is impacted by transaction costs.

Topic 6: Analysing the major forces operating behind the concept of control and ownership in the United Kingdom

Research Aim: This study will help analyse the major forces that control and own institutions in the UK and how they impact the economy.

Topic 7: Traits of British managers and investors. A Comparative analysis

Research Aim: This will be an interesting study as it will talk about the various traits of British managers and investors.

Topic 8: Role of educational aspects in entrepreneurship

Research Aim: This research will explore the role of education concerning entrepreneurship, i.e. how does education help build entrepreneurs, which in turn benefits the economy.

Topic 9: The concept of latent entrepreneurship – A comparison between the United Kingdom and Europe

Research Aim: This study will understand the concept of latent entrepreneurship by comparing the UK environment with that of Europe.

Topic 10: Is the profit of a firm dependent on its size? Evidence from the manufacturing firms in the UK

Research Aim: This research will help in understanding whether the profit of a company is dependent on the business’ size or not. The UK Manufacturing industry will be explored.

Dissertation Topics on Environmental Economics

Environment and economics share a unique and close relationship. The environment can affect economics in a good or bad way. There are various environmental economic issues that should be addressed. Following are some of the pressing issues pertaining to environmental economics that you can choose as your dissertation topic.

Topic 1: To what extent is the environment responsible for shaping business behaviours? A critical analysis

Research Aim: This research will talk about the extent to which the environment is responsible for building business behaviours.

Topic 2: Economics in relation to biodiversity and nature conservation. An evidence-based study

Research Aim: This research will discuss economics in relation to biodiversity and nature conservation.

Topic 3: Assessing the role of NGO’s and organizations to promote a healthy environment through fundraising programs

Research Aim: This research will help in assessing the role of NGOs and organisations in promoting healthy environments through various fundraising programs.

Topic 4: Willingness to pay for various recycling programs – A case study of the United Kingdom.

Research Aim : This research will help understand the different recycling programs by evaluating a UK-based case study.

Topic 5: Incentives regarding land and water management – A case study of the United Kingdom

Research Aim: This research will talk about various incentives relating to land and water management. A UK-based case study will be chosen.

Topic 6: Economic value of historical places: A critical analysis

Research Aim: This research will talk about the economic value of historical places and will present a critical analysis.

Topic 7: In which field is it cheapest to reduce or cut carbon emissions? Discuss.

Research Aim: This research will talk about the impacts of carbon emissions and will discuss in which field it will be cheapest to reduce or eliminate such emissions.

Topic 8: Ethanol production from an economic perspective. Discuss.

Research Aim: This research will help in exploring ethanol production with respect to economics.

Topic 9: Environmental improvements in regards to locational differences in communities Discuss in an economic approach

Research Aim: This research will present various environmental improvements with respect to locational differences in communities.

Topic 10: Climate change in relation to economics. Discuss

Research Aim: This research will talk about an important issue, i.e. climate change and the impact it has on economics.

Dissertation Topics on Regional Development

Economic growth can also be studied at a regional level. This field considers economic perspectives on a smaller level with a focus on trade between regions. Suggestions for dissertation topics in this field are listed as follows:

Topic 1: Evaluating the link between profit and regional development?

Research Aim: This research will evaluate the link between profit and regional development with respect to economics.

Topic 2: Assessing the “regional development policy” in the United Kingdom

Research Aim: This study will talk about the regional development policy in the UK.

Topic 3: Discussing the role of learning or knowledge gaining involved in regional development?

Research Aim: This research will explore the role of knowledge and learning that helps promote regional development.

Topic 4: Assessing the existence of location theories that contribute towards the development and understanding of regional development

Research Aim: This research will assess the existence of locational theories that help contribute towards the development and understanding of regional development.

Topic 5: Evaluating the role that technology plays in regional development? A UK case study

Research Aim: This research will evaluate the role that technology plays in promoting regional development.

Topic 6: Exploring entrepreneurship and its regional aspects in the United Kingdom

Research Aim: This research will help explore entrepreneurship and entrepreneurship network with respect to regional development in the UK.

Topic 7: Role of Institutional setups in regional development

Research Aim: This study will talk about the role of institutional setups in regional development.

Topic 8: Assessing the relationship between unemployment and entrepreneurship in the light of evidence from British relationship

Research Aim: This research will assess the relationship between unemployment and entrepreneurship in the UK.

Find 100s of dissertation topics for other research areas.

Topic 9: In what ways the UK and the European firms are different in terms of innovation – A critical analysis

Research Aim: This research will help in understanding the various ways in which the UK and European firms are different with respect to innovation.

Topic 10: Assessing the role of regional co-operation in developing sustainable advantage

Research Aim: This research will help in assessing the role of regional cooperation in developing sustainable advantage amongst regions

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Important Notes

As a student of economics looking to get good grades, it is essential to develop new ideas and experiment on existing economics theories – i.e., to add value and interest in your research topic.

The field of economics is vast and interrelated to so many other academic disciplines like civil engineering ,  construction ,  law , engineering management , healthcare , mental health , artificial intelligence , tourism , physiotherapy , sociology , management , marketing and nursing . That is why it is imperative to create a project management dissertation topic that is articular, sound, and actually solves a practical problem that may be rampant in the field.

We can’t stress how important it is to develop a logical research topic; it is the basis of your entire research. There are several significant downfalls to getting your topic wrong; your supervisor may not be interested in working on it, the topic has no academic creditability, the research may not make logical sense, there is a possibility that the study is not viable.

This impacts your time and efforts in  writing your dissertation  as you may end up in the cycle of rejection at the very initial stage of the dissertation. That is why we recommend reviewing existing research to develop a topic, taking advice from your supervisor, and even asking for help in this particular stage of your dissertation.

Keeping our advice in mind while developing a research topic will allow you to pick one of the best economics dissertation topics that not only fulfil your requirement of writing a research paper but also adds to the body of knowledge.

Therefore, it is recommended that when finalizing your dissertation topic, you read recently published literature to identify gaps in the research that you may help fill.

Remember- dissertation topics need to be unique, solve an identified problem, be logical, and can also be practically implemented. Take a look at some of our sample economics dissertation topics to get an idea for your own dissertation.

How to Structure your Economics Dissertation

A well-structured dissertation can help students to achieve a high overall academic grade.

• A Title Page
• Acknowledgments
• Declaration
• Abstract: A summary of the research completed
• Table of Contents
• Introduction : This chapter includes the project rationale, research background, key research aims and objectives, and the research problems to be addressed. An outline of the structure of a dissertation  can also be added to this chapter.
• Literature Review :  This chapter presents relevant theories and frameworks by analysing published and unpublished literature available on the chosen research topic, in light of  research questions  to be addressed. The purpose is to highlight and discuss the relative weaknesses and strengths of the selected research area while identifying any research gaps. Break down of the topic, and key terms can have a positive impact on your dissertation and your tutor.
• Methodology:  The  data collection  and  analysis  methods and techniques employed by the researcher are presented in the Methodology chapter which usually includes  research design, research philosophy, research limitations, code of conduct, ethical consideration, data collection methods, and  data analysis strategy .
• Findings and Analysis:  Findings of the research are analysed in detail under the Findings and Analysis chapter. All key findings/results are outlined in this chapter without interpreting the data or drawing any conclusions. It can be useful to include  graphs ,  charts, and  tables in this chapter to identify meaningful trends and relationships.
• Discussion  and  Conclusion: The researcher presents his interpretation of results in this chapter, and states whether the research hypothesis has been verified or not. An essential aspect of this section is to establish the link between the results and evidence from the literature. Recommendations with regards to implications of the findings and directions for the future may also be provided. Finally, a summary of the overall research, along with final judgments, opinions, and comments, must be included in the form of suggestions for improvement.
• References:  Make sure to complete this in accordance with your University’s requirements
• Bibliography
• Appendices:  Any additional information, diagrams, graphs that were used to  complete the dissertation  but not part of the dissertation should be included in the Appendices chapter. Essentially, the purpose is to expand the information/data.

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How to find economics dissertation topics.

For economics dissertation topics:

• Follow economic news and debates.
• Study emerging areas like behavioral economics.
• Analyze policy gaps or challenges.
• Review economic theories and their applications.
• Explore data-driven research opportunities.
• Seek topics aligning with your passion and career aspirations.

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Feminist dissertation topics focus on the people who believe that women should have equal chances and rights as men. Feminism is a historical, social, and political movement founded by women to achieve gender equality and remove injustice.

The Law of the EU has gained a growing amount of academic attention, especially since the UK decided to leave the union. Concerns are growing about how EU law will continue to impact the UK constitution.

Find the most unique and interesting dissertation topic ideas for translation studies to help you in your translation dissertation/ thesis.

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101 top economics thesis topics 2024 ideas.

An economics thesis is an academic research document that delves into various aspects of economic theory, analysis, and policy. It typically represents the culmination of a student’s exploration, understanding, and critical analysis of economic concepts and their real-world applications.

Introduction to Economics Thesis:

Purpose and scope:.

An economics thesis aims to investigate, analyze, and contribute original insights to economic theories, phenomena, or policies. It may focus on microeconomics , macroeconomics , econometrics, economic history, development economics, environmental economics, or other specialized areas within the field.

Key Components:

• Research Question: The thesis usually revolves around a central research question or hypothesis that guides the investigation.
• Literature Review: Reviewing existing economic literature is essential to contextualize the research and identify gaps or areas for further exploration.
• Data and Methodology: Depending on the nature of the thesis, it may involve empirical analysis, theoretical modeling, econometric techniques, or a combination of these methods.
• Analysis and Findings: Presenting and interpreting research findings, which could include statistical results, economic models, or empirical observations.
• Discussion and Conclusion: Analyzing the implications of the findings, discussing limitations, suggesting policy implications, and summarizing the overall contributions of the research.

Importance in Academics:

• Demonstration of Skills: An economics thesis showcases a student’s ability to conduct independent research, analyze data, apply economic theories, and present coherent arguments.
• Contribution to Knowledge: It contributes to the existing body of economic knowledge by exploring new concepts, providing empirical evidence, or offering alternative viewpoints.
• Preparation for Further Study or Career: For students pursuing higher education or careers in economics, a thesis serves as a valuable academic achievement and preparation for advanced study or professional endeavors.

Diverse Research Areas:

• Macroeconomic Analysis: Topics can include monetary policy, fiscal policy, economic growth, inflation, unemployment, etc.
• Microeconomic Analysis: Focuses on individual behavior, markets, competition, consumer behavior, firm behavior, etc.
• Applied Economics: Investigates economic issues in specific industries, regions, or sectors, such as healthcare, finance, labor markets, environmental economics, etc.
• Econometrics and Quantitative Analysis: Employs statistical methods to analyze economic data and test economic theories.

Creating an extensive list of 101 economics thesis topics involves covering various subfields and topics within economics. Here’s a diverse range of potential research areas and thesis topics across different branches of economics:

Macroeconomics and Monetary Policy

• Impact of Fiscal Policy on Economic Growth
• Monetary Policy Transmission Mechanisms
• Analysis of Inflation Dynamics and Control Measures
• Exchange Rate Volatility and International Trade
• Economic Effects of Government Debt Accumulation
• Financial Market Development and Economic Stability
• Income Inequality and Macroeconomic Performance
• Fiscal Policy Multipliers and Economic Stimulus
• Economic Consequences of Deflation
• Optimal Currency Areas and Monetary Unions

Microeconomics and Market Analysis

• Consumer Behavior Analysis in Different Markets
• Price Discrimination and Market Efficiency
• Game Theory Applications in Oligopoly Markets
• Market Power and Competition Policy
• Impact of Mergers and Acquisitions on Market Structures
• Behavioral Economics in Decision-Making
• Labor Market Discrimination and Wage Inequality
• Economics of Information and Asymmetric Information
• Industry Analysis and Competitive Strategies
• Economics of Network Effects and Platform Markets

Development Economics and International Trade

• Impact of Foreign Direct Investment on Economic Growth
• Trade Liberalization and Economic Development
• Poverty Alleviation Strategies and Programs
• Remittances and Economic Development in Developing Countries
• Sustainable Development Goals and Economic Policy
• Impact of Globalization on Income Distribution
• Foreign Aid Effectiveness and Economic Development
• Trade Policies and Export-led Growth Strategies
• Technology Transfer and Economic Development
• Migration and its Economic Effects on Sending and Receiving Countries

Environmental Economics and Sustainability

• Economics of Climate Change Mitigation Policies
• Valuation of Ecosystem Services and Natural Resources
• Renewable Energy Economics and Policy Analysis
• Environmental Regulations and Economic Impact
• Economic Instruments for Pollution Control
• Sustainable Consumption and Production Patterns
• Economics of Water Resource Management
• Circular Economy Models and Waste Management
• Biodiversity Conservation and Economic Incentives
• Carbon Pricing and Emissions Trading Systems

Behavioral Economics and Decision-Making

• Nudge Theory and Behavioral Interventions
• Time Preferences and Implications for Economic Behavior
• Prospect Theory and Risky Decision-Making
• Behavioral Economics in Public Policy Design
• Social Preferences and Altruism in Economic Decision-Making
• Behavioral Biases in Financial Decision-Making
• Impact of Framing and Anchoring on Consumer Choices
• Rationality and Irrationality in Economic Decision-Making
• Incentive Structures and Behavioral Responses
• Behavioral Economics in Health and Wellness

Financial Economics and Corporate Finance

• Asset Pricing Models and Market Anomalies
• Financial Crises and Regulatory Responses
• Corporate Governance and Firm Performance
• Impact of Corporate Social Responsibility on Financial Performance
• Initial Public Offerings (IPOs) and Stock Market Behavior
• Behavioral Finance and Investor Decision-Making
• Derivatives Market and Risk Management Strategies
• Financial Inclusion and Access to Finance
• Mergers and Acquisitions in Financial Markets
• Microfinance and Economic Development

Labor Economics and Human Capital

• Impact of Education on Economic Growth
• Labor Market Segmentation and Income Inequality
• Gender Wage Gap and Equal Pay Policies
• Technological Change and Labor Market Dynamics
• Minimum Wage Policies and Employment Effects
• Economics of Unemployment and Labor Market Policies
• Human Capital Investment and Economic Returns
• Skill Mismatch and Labor Market Outcomes
• Aging Population and Labor Force Participation
• Economics of Immigration and Labor Market Integration

Health Economics and Public Health Policy

• Economic Analysis of Healthcare Systems
• Health Insurance and Access to Healthcare Services
• Cost-Benefit Analysis of Public Health Interventions
• Healthcare Expenditure and Economic Growth
• Economics of Pharmaceutical Industry and Pricing
• Behavioral Economics in Health-related Decision-Making
• Public Health Policies and Disease Prevention
• Health Inequality and Socioeconomic Status
• Mental Health Economics and Policy Implications
• Impact of COVID-19 Pandemic on Health Economics

Regional and Urban Economics

• Urbanization and Economic Development
• Impact of Infrastructure Development on Regional Growth
• Housing Market Dynamics and Policy Interventions
• Regional Disparities and Convergence
• Economics of Transportation and Mobility
• Urban Planning and Economic Efficiency
• Local Government Finance and Fiscal Policies
• Innovation Clusters and Regional Competitiveness
• Smart Cities and Technology Integration
• Rural Development Strategies and Policies

International Economics and Globalization

• Global Value Chains and Trade Networks
• Economics of International Capital Flows
• Global Economic Governance and Institutions
• Impact of Trade Agreements on Economic Growth
• Economic Effects of Protectionism and Tariffs
• Currency Crises and International Financial Stability
• Economic Integration and Regional Cooperation
• Emerging Markets and Economic Resilience
• Economic Diplomacy and Bilateral Relations
• International Labor Mobility and Economic Effects
• Economic Consequences of Global Pandemics and Health Crises

These 101 economics thesis topics encompass a wide spectrum of economic theories, policies, and real-world applications. Students and researchers can explore these topics, delve deeper into specific areas, and contribute valuable insights to the ever-evolving field of economics.

If you are stuck with writing your Economics thesis, send your requirement to [email protected] and get instant Economics theis writing help .

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Department of Economics

Finding a senior thesis topic.

Some senior thesis topics come from a student's previous research for a term paper or an experience in an internship. Other ideas come from subjects studied in a course or current headlines. But many students have difficulty coming up with a topic that "works" — one that is researchable by an Econ senior and where data are readily available. Below are research topics suggested by current faculty members in their own areas of expertise.

Health Economics/Labor Economics

Impact of economic crisis on mortality and population health in poor countries

How has the recent economic crisis affected health and mortality in poor countries? Has it differentially affected young versus older-age mortality, or male versus female mortality? Have parents favored, for example, protecting the health of sons over daughters in the crisis? How do the health effects of this crisis compare with those of other crises? USAID’s Demographic and Health Surveys include surveys of the health status of children and adults in many developing countries in the 1990s and 2000s and could be used to investigate this question.

Do pro-natalist policies increase fertility rates?  

Many countries now have fertility rates below the replacement level and are concerned about declining populations. In an effort to increase fertility, some countries now offer substantial payments to women for (for example) the birth of a second child. Do these payments work, or simply change the timing of fertility as some critics have argued? One could investigate this question by examining one or more of the European countries that have implemented these policies.

Environmental Economics

Environmental regulation and public health

California has some of the most stringent environmental regulations in the country and some of the worst measures of environmental quality. Yet very few studies look specifically at the relationship between environmental policy and health outcomes in California. Using publicly available pollution and health data (as well as regulatory information), a student can look for evidence of measurable health benefits from the extraordinary regulatory measures that California has undertaken for the past 30 years.

Industry transformation

To shed light on recent government efforts to bail out auto companies based in Detroit, a student could analyze the earlier cases of Pittsburgh (or Birmingham or any other steel town) and the process of transformation from a one-industry city specializing in steel to a high-tech more diversified city. How long did it take to "adjust"? What did the changes cost?

Education/Public Sector

Project STAR

For four years, the state of Tennessee conducted an experiment in its elementary schools. Students were randomly assigned to classes of different sizes, and teachers were randomly assigned to classroom. Data is available on some student characteristics (e.g., race, free lunch eligibility) and on some teacher characteristics (e.g., race). The students were tested in math and reading in grades K-3. Follow-up studies tracked their later achievement. With this data set, it is possible to investigate a number of questions regarding the effects of smaller classes and different kinds of teachers on different groups of students, and whether these effects persisted over time.

Massachusetts Health Care Refor

In 2006 Massachusetts undertake health care reform. The Massachusetts effort served as the model for the national health reform law that was passed in 2010. What were the major features of the Massachusetts reform, and what have its effects been on the number of people with health insurance, on health care costs, and on health care quality?

Micro/Industrial Organization/Finance

Prof. Graddy has three different datasets students are welcome to use for any senior thesis project:

• Data on violin prices at auction — one dataset is a repeat-sales dataset from 1855 to present and another dataset contains detailed individual data from 1980 to present.
• Data on art sold at auction between 1980 and 1992.
• Real estate data from the MLS — for example all homes listed in Boston and suburbs during January 2003.

Some specific ideas for using these datasets:

Violins as assets

Estimate a CAPM model using detailed violin data. Prof. Graddy can supply the violin data, but the student will need to download relevant stock and bond data and understand how to estimate the model.

Testing for optimizing behavior by impressionist artists

Estimate the price-per-square-foot for impressionist art, and then determining whether or not the majority of artists are optimizing.

House prices and school ranking

Using the MLS data, one might be able to correlate real estate prices to school ranking in the Boston area and then explain why the correlation is as it is.

R&D Spending/China

From 1996 to present, the ratio of R&D spending to GDP in China has risen from 0.6% to over 2%, now matching the OECD countries. What is motivating the increase? Who performs R&D and why? Data set: most of China’s large, medium and small manufacturing firms — a panel of about 400,000 firms spanning 1998-2007. Includes data on R&D, exports, new product innovation and other relevant measures.

How does patenting in China's renewable energy sector compare with that of the U.S.?  

This will entail accessing patent data from China's State Intellectual Property Office and the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office comparing the quantity and quality of such patenting over the past decade.

Econometrics

Degree to which stock return predictability changed over time

Historical data on the aggregate S&P 500 index and most of the key macroeconomic and financial indicators that have been found to be useful predictors of returns are available from Amit Goyal’s website at http://www.hec.unil.ch/agoyal/docs/PredictorData2010.xls . Professor Pettenuzzo has been working with this data recently and would be happy to advise students that would like to work with it. Some interesting questions worth exploring are related to the degree to which stock return predictability changed over time.

For example, the five-year period between 1990 and 1995 has been found to be one the most detrimental time period for the hypothesis that stock returns can, at least to some extent, be predicted. Various hypotheses have been suggested as possible explanations for this significant change in predictability, but there is no clear consensus on which institutional or macroeconomic factor might best suited to explain this phenomenon. The question of what generated this change in predictability is still quite open.

Economic History/Economics of Financial Institutions

Railroad profits and investment

The period from the Civil War to World War I was the golden age of American railroads. Railroad mileage grew dramatically over the period but at a very uneven pace. Large portions of the railroad network were laid down in relatively brief spurts followed by periods of limited growth and, in some cases, bankruptcies or restructuring. What explains the pattern of railroad expansion over this period?

The January effect

The efficient market hypothesis predicts that stock prices should not exhibit predicable patterns but should move randomly. However, small stocks tend to exhibit abnormally high returns from late December through early January. Recent work indicates that the January effect has become smaller over time — and some claim that it has disappeared altogether. What generated the January effect and what explains its decline in the past two decades?

International Macroeconomics, Macroeconomics

Price dynamic

Prof. Schoenle has worked with the micro data underlying the CPI, PPI and IPP (US export and import prices) published by the BLS. Very disaggregated data for these series are published online by the BLS at http://www.bls.gov . There is detailed online documentation about these datasets available in the form of the BLS Handbook and FAQs.

Many policy questions can be addressed by studying these data such as: How does a large appreciation of the Chinese Yuan pass through into US import and domestic prices? How do various measures of the exchange rate pass through into US import prices? Do domestic, export and import price indices show consistent price dynamics for example for computer electronics prices? Prof. Schoenle has worked extensively with these data and is happy to advise students interested in working on US price dynamics.

Corporate Finance

Governance of mutual fund firms

The aim of the study is to examine whether different corporate governance practices of mutual fund companies have any effect on the returns to mutual fund investors. The emphasis will be on the different board structures of the mutual fund companies (whether the different funds under the same mutual fund family group share a board of directors). The project involves collecting data on mutual fund board characteristics and managerial characteristics, and then analyzing whether (a) the performance of the fund is higher under any board structure, and (b) there is less performance transfer to the star funds under any board structure.

Executive compensation and risk taking in the banking sector

This study will analyze how different components of executive compensation packages (salary, bonus, stock-based awards, pension contributions) affects the executive risk-taking in the banking industry. The project involves (a) organizing the compensation data, (b) developing risk-taking measures for the banking industry, (c) using econometric techniques to investigate the relation between executive compensation and risk-taking.

Diversification effects in biopharmaceutical firms

Several studies indicate that diversified firms trade at an average discount relative to specialized firms in the same industries (Lang and Stulz, 1994; Berger and Ofek, 1995; Servaes, 1996). However, Villalonga (2004) argues that the computed diversification discounts in the prior studies is merely a “data artifact” because the use of segment data introduces a noise by breaking down the activities of firms by industries inconsistently across firms. Thus, the presence of a “diversification discount” is still an open debate in corporate finance. Using a hand-collected dataset on drug development activities of U.S. pharmaceutical companies, we will try to perform tests of effects of diversification at a product level.

Macroeconomics

Consumer expectations and buying attitudes

The micro data from the Michigan Survey of Consumers is all available online at http://www.sca.isr.umich.edu/ . Prof. Tortorice has worked with this data in the past and would be happy to advise someone who wants to work with it. The documentation is online so a student can browse through the variables and come up with some questions that the data can be used to answer.

The Survey of Consumers is a monthly survey of the economic expectations and buying attitudes of U.S. households. It covers personal finances, business conditions and buying conditions. The variables include assessments of personal finances, expected changes in family income and attitudes towards business conditions in the economy as a whole, over the near and the long-term horizon. It also contains expected changes in inflation, unemployment, and interest rates, as well as confidence in government economic policies. Finally, it includes each respondent's view on market conditions for buying large household durables, vehicles, and houses. Several demographic variables, e.g., education, age, race and gender, are available as well.

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Economics Dissertation Topics: 25+ Examples You Can Explore

by  Antony W

July 11, 2022

If you’re looking for some economics dissertation topics to help you brainstorm your topic idea, this guide is for you.

Popularized by the likes of Adam Smith as far back as 1770, Economics is a subject that deals with making the right decisions in the face of uncertainty and scarcity.

As much as it dates back to the medieval scholastics, economics still focuses largely on human choices, borrowing habits, markets and trade, assets’ pricing, human behavior in relation to economic decisions, taxes, and consumption.

Existing literature on economics attempt to give the best possible explanations to problems human beings face. Still, there’s need for more research in this field because new areas continue to emerge in economics, especially since technology continues to advance enhance transformation and increase the rate of globalization.

Given how wide this field is, there are dozens of economic dissertation topics that you can choose to explore in your research project. This guide is a list of some of the topic ideas that you might want to consider for the project.

25+ List of Economic Dissertation Topics

Economics is a wide field with different areas of exploration. This guide looks at some of the areas economics, each with a few examples of dissertation topics that you can investigate.

Dissertation Topics on Regional Development

Your focus on regional development is to study regions as small economies with the aim of understanding their circumstances and outcomes. You’ll examine how internal regional economies operate and evaluate how they relate to other regions.

Some interesting topics that you can investigate in your dissertation in this area are as follows:

• Business development and profitability in the region What are the underlying variables in this relationship?
• Natural resource comparative advantage and regional development
• There are differences in the forms and levels of entrepreneurship and unemployment across England, Wales, Scotland, and Northern Ireland.
• The impact of regional policy on start-ups on regional development: more new enterprises or better existing ones?
• Entrepreneurial networks’ contribution to regional development.

Also Check: Custom Economics Dissertation Writing Help

Dissertation Topic Ideas on Economic Sociology

Examine the sociological aspects that affect economic indicators and explain how they relate with the social outcome.

Some great topics that you might want to consider for your dissertation project if you choose to focus on this area include:

• The function of social networks in facilitating innovation in mature sectors.
• How can universities take advantage of social networks to induce entrepreneurial action among their students?
• Exploring the disparities between trust and power in local productive systems.
• Is there a straight line between economic and social development?
• In the United Kingdom, traditional industry development is fueled by social contracts and peer pressure.
• Family support, both financial and non-financial, in the development of successful entrepreneurship.
• The convergence of economic systems as a result of globalization and its implications for social development in developed, emerging, and developing economies.

Related: Technology Dissertation Topics

Economic Geography Topics for Dissertation Project

This area focuses on economical outcome in relation to geographical location. You’ll evaluate patterns and trends in activities and human behavior to explain what shapes the cultural and economic landscapes.

Here are some topic ideas to consider if you want to write a dissertation project in this area:

• The influence of local and regional cultures on entrepreneurship and economic growth.
• Is there a link between established enterprises that dominate small towns and local cultural factors?
• The likelihood impact of Brexit on policy outcomes that shape the local economy in UK cities.
• The economic geography of recession. Difference between regional and city economics in the UK.
• Understanding educational progression at the local level: A comparison of cities in the UK’s north and south.
• How COVID has influenced house price volatility in various UK cities.

Institutional Economics Dissertation Topics

This area deals with social entities linked to production, distribution, and consumption of goods and services. Given that this is a broad area, you might have to study related disciplines such as psychology, economic history, management and business studies cognitive and brain science, and behavioral economics and finance. 

• Here are some dissertation topic ideas that you should consider:
• How can transaction costs economics account for inter-firm collaboration?
• Economic freedom institutions and policies have different effects on income and growth.
• How does the cultural mix affect the organization of enterprises in the United Kingdom?

Also Check: Social Work Dissertation Topics

Dissertation Topics That Deals With Employment Economics

Given that employment is a key concept in the production of goods and services, it’s important to study the rate at which organizations hire talents and the compensations offered.

Below are some topic ideas that you can explore in this area of economics: 

• The influence of gender disparity in employment on economic growth and labor productivity.
• What effect does technological innovation have on British unemployment? Evidence from the industrial industry.
• The impact of economic cycles on employment, workforce productivity, and innovation: a case study of the manufacturing sector

Macroeconomics Dissertation Topics

Macroeconomics is an interesting field that examines an economy as a whole. In this division, the focus is on how markets interact with each other to generate aggregate variables. You’ll study national income, gross domestic product, employment, inflation, global economy, and financial markets.

Here are some interesting topics that you can explore in your dissertation if you’re studying macroeconomics:

• COVID and the economic downturn: Will the impact be as severe as the 2007 financial downturn?
• The global economic downturn and the causes that lead to it.
• How will the Greek financial crisis affect the EU economy in the long run?

Microeconomic Dissertation Topics

In microeconomics, the focus is on the interaction between demand and supply in different markets. You’ll study and interpret how economic agents behave in different settings and identify the incentives they’re more than likely to face by building modes and using data to conduct your research and experiments.

Here are some interesting topics to cover in this area:

• Does the size of a company impact its profits? Evidence from UK telecommunications companies.
• Are UK corporations more inventive than their European counterparts?
• Is the retail industry in the United Kingdom becoming less oligopolistic? An examination of the effects of new supermarkets.
• The development of household consumption in the United Kingdom during the previous decade: Consumer behavior trends.

About the author 

Antony W is a professional writer and coach at Help for Assessment. He spends countless hours every day researching and writing great content filled with expert advice on how to write engaging essays, research papers, and assignments.

Economics Essay Topics: 162 Practical Ideas & Useful Tips

Essay writing is an inherent part of the economics studying process. Nevertheless, it is quite a challenging task. Are you a high school or college student who is struggling with an economic essay topic choice? Or maybe you are unsure about your writing skills?

We know how to help you .

The following article will guide you in choosing the best topic for your essay on economics. Here, you can find a variety of ideas for high school or college. The economic essay topics are divided into several categories that will help you with your research. And a pleasant bonus from our team! We have created a great guide on how to write an economics essay.

So, don’t miss your chance to write an outstanding economic paper! Check out our essay ideas, read our tips carefully, and be ready to receive your grade A!

• ⭐ Best Economic Topics
• 🤝 Socio-Economic
• 🗺️ International Economics
• 🛠️ Labor Economics
• 🌆 Urban Economics
• ⚽ Sports Economics
• 💉 Health Economics
• 💼 Business Economics
• 🏤 Globalization
• 🧮 Economic History
• 💫 How to Write?

⭐ 15 Best Economic Essay Topics

• 2008 Economic Crisis.
• Socio-economic policy.
• Economic systems – Singapore.
• Racial pay gap.
• Economic globalization.
• History of online trading.
• Child labor policies.
• The Economic Naturalist.
• Foundations of economic theory.
• Impact of unemployment.
• Universal Basic Income.
• The role of consumerism.
• Healthcare economics – Canada’s Medicare.
• Reasons for recession.
• Cryptocurrency & environmental issues.

✨ Excellent Economic Essay Topics

Has economics always been a subject of meticulous research? The question is quite controversial, right? There is no specific time when economics started its rapid progress. Generally, economics remains the topic of interest since the establishment of capitalism in the Western world.

Nowadays, the economy is the main engine that moves our world forward. The way we do business determines the geopolitical situation in the world. Moreover, it influences many other parts of our lives.

Economics studying is of utmost importance nowadays. It helps to gain a better understanding of processes that put everything in motion.

Economics is quite broad, so it has a great variety of subfields. And this is a fantastic opportunity for us to generate as many essay ideas as possible. Here, you will find great economic topics for your paper. As mentioned before, we have divided them into several sections to ease your selection process. There’s a wide selection of free college essays samples on economics in our database, too. So be sure to check that out.

🤝 Socio-Economic Essay Topics

• The economic impact of racial segregation in America in the 1950s.
• Designing a just socio-economic system.
• Socio-economic status of Hong Kong in modern-day China. Explain how the city of Hong Kong gained a special status in China. Why did it emerge as one of the most important cities in its economy? Comment on the significance of Hong Kong in the international economic arena.
• Economic growth in the United States in the post-World War 2 period.
• Mobile banking in Saudi Arabia: towards understanding the factors that affect the sector.
• The importance of Dior’s bar suit to the women’s fashion industry.
• Economic problems in the 1980’s Soviet Union. Talk about the significant problems with the economy the USSR had in the 1980s. What role did they play in its collapse?
• What socio-economic problems did segregation in South Africa cause?
• History of economic development in the UAE. Discuss the economic miracle in the UAE and Dubai. Explain how the government could turn the city of Dubai into one of the most famous tourist destinations. What strategies were applied?
• Gender inequality and socio-economic development .
• The problem of poverty in Venezuela.
• How the socio-economic and political position of women changed between 1880 and 1940.
• The economic impact of COVID-19 on global trade.

• How do the three main economic groups interact with each other? There are three critical economic groups: – Consumers – Producers – Government Analyze the interaction of these groups with each other.
• Extended essay: how the study of economic data helped our society to advance?
• Western industrialization socio-economic impacts.
• Inequality at the top: not all billionaires have the same powers. Analyze billionaires’ net worth, liquidity, political power, and wealth security. Explain why they have unequal social status. What factors determine the influence of billionaires?
• An analysis of systems that help us measure agricultural development in a country.
• Is social media a useful tool for brand promotion?
• The phenomenon of dualism in economic development.

🗺️ International Economics Essay Topics

• Globalization and its impact on international economic relations. Define the term globalization. What role does globalization play in international economic relations? Provide specific examples of globalization’s impact on the global political economy.
• The lack of justice for the cheap international labor market. Discuss the issue of cheap labor in various countries. Why do some workers often lack fundamental human rights while others abuse moral norms? Analyze the causes and effects of inequality in the workplace.
• Japan macroeconomics: problems and possible solutions.
• The issue of mercantilism in the history of Great Britain. Analyze the rise and development of mercantilism in the history of Great Britain. To solidify your ideas, provide persuasive arguments, and appropriate examples of mercantilism.
• Why does the problem of environmental protection remain unresolved among global economies?
• Nissan Motor company’s international business.
• International environmental concerns in economics: the case of China .
• The issue of international criminal justice in industry. Explain why international businesses often avoid criminal justice after wrongdoings. Select one case of unethical behavior of a company’s CEO or regular employee. Briefly introduce the problem. What were the causes and effects? How was the issue resolved? Express your own opinion regarding the lack of criminal justice in business.
• The economy of Singapore and its role in international trade.
• International microeconomics trade dispute case study: US-China dispute on the exportation of raw materials.
• The phenomenon of the “gig economy” and its impact on the global economy.
• The effect of population growth in the international economy.
• International economics in the context of globalization.

• How does Brexit affect the economy of the European Union? Analyze the immediate impact of Brexit on the EU’s economy. Predict future advantages and disadvantages of Brexit for both: Great Britain and the EU.
• South Africa: international agribusiness, trade, and financing.
• Historical essay: the economy of the Dutch East India company.
• The issue of Mozambique’s economy and possible solutions. Investigate the issue of extreme poverty in Mozambique. What are some possible solutions to the problem of poverty? Base your suggestions on the country’s cultural, historical, and geographical aspects.
• Imbalances in the global economy. Discuss the imbalances between trading countries on the scale of the global economy. What solutions would you suggest to deal with this issue?
• How will global economies adapt to China’s growing power?
• Etihad Airways company managerial economics.

🛠️ Labor Economics Essay Topics

• Ford Motor company’s labor economics.
• Labor economics: child labor.
• The UPS firm perspective: the labor market.
• Gender inequality of wage rate in modern business. Research how and why gender inequality is still an issue in the modern world of economics. What are some ways to deal with the problem? Present your ideas accurately and effectively. Provide solid arguments and appropriate examples to prove your position.
• What are the best ways to increase labor productivity in business?
• Labor unions adverse effects on economics.
• The decrease of the labor force in modern industries. Talk about the rising rates of robotization in the majority of industries. How will it affect the traditional labor force? Comment on the problem of unemployment caused by labor automatization.
• Violations of labor rights of workers.
• Modern labor essay: how can an entrepreneur guarantee the minimum wage to their workers?
• How can labor geography help develop a special economic zone? Talk about labor geography and its effects on developing an exclusive economic zone. How does the geopolitical location of a particular country influence its level of economic development?
• Entrepreneurship in the organic cosmetics sphere.
• Gender-oriented labor trade unions. A case study. Discuss the gender-oriented trade unions and analyze their impact on our society.
• Child labor in the Turkish cotton industry.

• The connection between economic growth and demography. Analyze the connection between economic growth and its demographic context. Investigate both sides: – The issue of overpopulation – The problem of low birth rate. From an economic perspective, what problem is more dangerous?
• The issue of sex discrimination in the workplace.
• The effects of Landrum-Griffin Labor Act. Explore the labor Act of Landrum-Griffin that was passed in the US Congress in 1959. Discuss its implications and consequences. Discuss its implications and consequences.

🌆 Urban Economics Essay Topics

• Cities and their role in aggregate economics.
• Urbanization in Hong Kong and its effects on citizens.
• The urban planning of the city of New York: a critical analysis. Analyze the urban history of NY. How has the city been developing? Discuss revolutionary solutions to the past and problems of modern times.
• The impact of a city’s design on the local traffic.
• Dubai’s spatial planning: creative solutions for building a city in the desert.
• Globalization, urban political economy, and economic restructuring.
• How do urban areas affect local wildlife? Comment on how modern production technologies in urban areas impact the natural diversity of wildlife. What impact does the rapid economic progress have on the environment? Suggest possible solutions.
• Urban sociology: does the city make us better people?
• Why should people be more careful about investing in real estate? Discuss the issues of overinvestment into real estate. Consider the economic crisis of 2008 as an example.
• How can regional authorities help improve a city?
• Urban life and its effects on education.
• The economic development of a city’s metropolitan area: challenges and solutions.
• Main factors for the emergence of cities in the Middle Ages.
• The ethics of relocation: is it justified? Talk about the case of relocating locals when building projects of great magnitude. To what extent can it be justified? Mention its economic and ethical side.
• The difficulties behind the construction of “green” buildings. Discuss the relatively new phenomenon of environmentally friendly buildings. Analyze both sides: the pros and cons. What obstacles lie behind the “green” building? What opportunities do the “green” buildings offer? Elaborate on your ideas by providing clear arguments or counterarguments.
• What factors play a critical role in the success of retail productivity in cities?

⚽ Sports Economics Essay Topics

• Do teams with higher budgets perform better on the field?
• Corruption in European football leagues: a critical analysis. Investigate the corruption issue in the European football leagues. State reasons and solutions for the problem.
• The managerial catastrophe of Arsenal F.C.

• The NextG sports company’s communication planning.
• Roger D. Blair’s Sports Economics literary review. Write a literary analysis of Sports Economics by Roger D. Blair. Discuss his opinion on the economy of sports. Do you agree or disagree with his position? Provide compelling supportive arguments or strong counterarguments.
• How significant is the impact factor of a local team on a city’s economy?
• Kinsmen Sports Centre: marketing metrics innovation.
• What role does statistical data play in sports? Analyze the part of economic statistical data in different sports organizations. How can statistics help to develop an effective financing plan? Comment on the impact of financing on the performance of a sports club.
• Sports and energy drinks marketing analysis.
• Is there a connection between the lack of money and any contemporary issues in a sports team?
• Performance-enhancing drugs in sports.
• The business of FIFA: a financial analysis. Investigate the finances of FIFA. What economic factors make them so influential in the modern world of football?
• The global sports retail industry.
• The Olympics: logistics and economy. Discuss the logistics behind the Olympics Games event. How the Olympic Games impact the economy of the host country?

💉 Health Economics Essay Topics

• Is bioprinting the new future of medicine? Analyze the new market of organ printing and discuss its challenges. Investigate bioprinting from an economic perspective. Will the outputs cover the inputs? How will bioprinting impact the financial aspect of the health care sector?
• Cost-effectiveness of pharmaceutical products in the United States. Comment on the immense cost-effectiveness of pharmaceuticals. What do you think is the price of pharmaceutical products reasonable? Is it ethical to set extremely high prices on the medicals?
• An economic evaluation of the antibiotics market.
• Health economics-SIC and NAICS.
• The financial side of cancer treatment: is it too expensive? Analyze the market for cancer treatment programs in various countries. Explore its costs and complications. What are some possible ways to reduce the price of cancer treatment and make it more affordable?
• The issue of fast food consumption: a multibillion-dollar market . Fast food has always been one of the notable causes of obesity, diabetes, and other illnesses. Investigate the economic aspect of the issue. Are high profits from fast food production worth peoples’ health conditions?
• History and evolution of healthcare economics.

• The financial management of a hospital: a case study.
• The issue of public healthcare in the USA. Write about the long-standing issue of medical sector operation in the USA. Analyze its history, financial, and social aspects.
• Demand in healthcare economics.
• What are the economic outcomes of a global pandemic? Taking the COVID-19 outbreak as an example, conduct research on the effects of a pandemic on the economy. How does it affect local economies? What impact does the quarantine have on the international economy? Provide appropriate examples to support your ideas.

💼 Business Economics Essay Topics

• When does an advertising campaign become unnecessary?
• Sustainable development of a nation’s economic stability. Discuss how a country can create a sustainable economy. Provide bright examples to solidify your position.
• How can a small business compete with monopolies?
• What are the limitations of the Lewis Model?
• The phenomenon of inflation: inevitable liability or a land of opportunity for our economies? Explore the process of inflation in modern economies. Does it only have adverse effects on the countries’ economies? Are there any advantages of inflation? Analyze it from a positive perspective.
• Economics, business, and sugar in the UK.
• The shadow economy of the finance sector. Dive into the backstage of the finance sector and research various “grey” areas where business can be done.
• Chinese and Japanese business systems comparison.
• Oil demand and its changes in the XXI century: a critical analysis. Analyze the oil sector and write about its fluctuation in the XXI century. How did the changes in oil demand affect the global economy?
• The social and economic impact of mass emigration.

🌠 40 More Good Economic Essay Topics

Scrolled through our ideas, but can’t find a suitable topic for yourself? No worries! We have more issues to share with you.

So, don’t stress out. Take a look at our list of economical essay topics. Here are 40 more ideas focusing on globalization and the history of economics.

🏤 Economic Globalization Essay Topics

• The impact of globalization on the tourist industry in the Caribbean . Analyze both: the positive and negative effects of globalization on the Caribbean. To make your paper well-structured, explore two advantages and two disadvantages. Don’t forget to improve your essay with strong evidence and appropriate examples!
• Toyota Motor Corporation: impacts of globalization.
• What are the effects of globalization on developing countries? To what extent do developing countries profit from globalization? Research the subject by comparing various examples.
• Defining globalization and its effects on current trade.
• Economic growth as a result of globalization: proper financial strategies. How can a country successfully achieve prosperity with globalization? Discuss proper economic strategies.
• The socio-political significance of the IT industry’s globalization.
• Human trafficking in developing nations as a result of globalization.

• Globalization and criminal justice policy.
• What are the advantages and disadvantages of globalization?
• Globalization challenges and countermeasures.
• The effect of globalization on worldwide trade and employment rates.
• Economic integration within the European Union: a critical analysis. Talk about the history of economic integration within the EU. What are the negative and positive outcomes of economic integration?
• Globalization and food in Japan.
• Does globalization bring negative effects to cultural heritage and identity?
• The Industrial Revolution as the first step towards globalization. Focus on the Industrial Revolution in Europe. Discuss its precursors and consequences. Why is the revolution considered to be a starting point of globalization? Provide specific examples of globalization processes that occurred in the economic sector after the Industrial revolution.
• Globalization 2.0 an analysis of a book by David Rieff.
• Globalization effects on fundamentalism growth.
• Does direct investment by foreign businesses come with strings attached? Dive into the shady area of globalization and discuss how to direct foreign investment can bring problems of geopolitical scale.
• Effects of globalization on sexuality.
• Alibaba’s globalization strategy: an economic analysis.

🧮 Economic History Essay Topics

• The rapid economic growth of Europe during the Age of Discovery. Analyze the factors that brought economic growth to Europe during the Age of Discovery. What factors contributed to the dynamic economic progress of that time?
• Brazil’s economic history.
• History of capitalism: from the Renaissance to the United States of America. Discuss the origins of capitalism and its centuries-long path towards XXth century America. How the establishment of capitalism impacted the economy of the USA?
• Max Weber: economic history, the theory of bureaucracy, and politics as a vocation.
• 2008 Economic Crisis: origins and fallout. Talk about the 2008 Financial Crisis. Discuss its causes and outcomes. What should have been done differently to avoid the global crisis? Comment on the economic strategies countries used to recover from it.
• The economic marvel of Communist China: from rags to riches.
• What made world economic growth of the Renaissance possible?

• The economic history of Canada: how did the settlers facilitate economic growth?
• What did the major powers of the XIXth century base their economies on?
• The Rothschilds: political and financial role in the Industrial Revolution. Research the dynasty of Rothschilds and how they came to power. What was their role in Europe’s Industrial Revolution?
• The link between the “oil curse” and the economic history of Latin America.
• Roman Empire’s monetary policy: a socio-economic analysis.
• How did the demand for different goods change their value in the 2000s years? Analyze the demand for goods in the 2000s years and their change in value. Why do these fluctuations in demand for products and services occur?
• The history of economic thought.
• Soviet Union’s economic timeline: from the new Economic Policy to Reformation. Discuss the economic issues of the Soviet Union from the historical perspective. Why did the Soviet Union collapse? What improvements in the financial sector should have been done?
• History of France economics over the past 20 years.
• The history of economic analysis.
• The concept of serfdom and slavery as the main economic engine of the past. Dive into the idea of feudalism and serfdom. Discuss its social and economic aspects.
• The World Bank’s structure, history, activities.
• The history of Islamic banking: concepts and ideas.

💫 How to Write an Economics Essay?

Generally, essay writing on economics has the same structure as any other essay. However, there are some distinctive features of economic papers. Thus, it is essential to figure them out from the very beginning of your work.

You might be wondering what those aspects of the economic paper are. Well, we have an answer.

Below, you will find a detailed plan that explains the fundamental concepts of the essay writing process. So, don’t hesitate to use our tips! They are indeed helpful.

Pick a topic and dissect it. Picking the right topic is the very basis of writing a successful essay. Think of something that you will be interested in and make sure you understand the issue clearly. Also, don’t forget to check our ultimate economics essay topics and samples list!

Research it. After selecting the right idea from our economical essay topics, research your subject thoroughly. Try to find every fascinating and intriguing detail about it. Remember that you can always ask your fellow students, friends, or a teacher for help.

Come up with a thesis statement. A thesis statement is an essential element of your essay. It will determine your focus and guide the readers throughout your paper. Make your thesis secure and try to catch the reader’s attention using context and word choice.

Outline your essay. Never underestimate the power of a well-structured outline! Creating an essay outline can significantly help you to determine your general plan. Evaluate which economic framework you will be using to address the issue. State the main points of your thesis and antithesis. Make sure that they answer the central question of your work.

Write your introduction. First and foremost, a practical introduction should capture the readers’ attention and state the essay’s key topic. So, put enough effort to develop an outstanding introduction. It will create the first impression of your paper.

Moreover, an introduction should include a thesis statement. As we have mentioned above, a thesis plays a crucial role. Thus, make sure it is clearly stated.

Another significant feature of the introduction is its coherence with the body of your essay. Consequently, the introductory paragraph’s last statement has to present the subject of the next section, generically. Also, keep in mind that no more than three key points can be discussed in a paper, even if it is an extended essay.

Thoroughly work on the body paragraphs. Usually, the body of the essay contains several paragraphs. The number of these paragraphs will depend on the nature of your question. Be sure to create one section for every critical point that you make. This will make your paper properly-structured, and the reader will quickly get your ideas. For your convenience, we created a plan to develop your ideas in each paragraph, So, use it and make your writing process easier!

• Argument. Present your argument in the topic sentence of the paragraph in a way that directly answers the question. A hint: the most effective way to introduce the critical point is to place the topic sentence at the beginning of the paragraph. This will help the readers to concentrate their attention on a specific idea.
• Comment and discussion. Explain the meaning of your argument and provide an economic analysis. Present clear evidence and persuasive arguments to solidify your position.
• Connection. Link your comments with the vital point of the paragraph. Demonstrate the coherence of your evidence with the point.
• Diagrams, tables, charts. If necessary, provide the reader with visual aids. Sometimes, an appropriate diagram or a suitable chart can say more than words. Besides, your paper will look more professional if you use any kind of visual aids.

Conclude your essay. In your conclusion, summarize and synthesize your work by restating your thesis. Also, it is crucial to strengthen it by mentioning the practical value of your findings. Remember to make your essay readable by choosing appropriate wording and avoiding too complex grammar constructions.

Thank you for visiting our page! Did you enjoy our article and learned something new? We are glad to help you. Don’t forget to leave a comment and share the article with others!

🔗 References

• High School Economics Topics: Econlib, The Library of Economics and Liberty
• Guide to Writing an Economics Essay: The Economics Tutor
• How to Write the Introduction of Your Development Economics Paper: David Evans, Center For Global Development
• Senior Essay: Department of Economics, Yale University
• Developing A Thesis: Maxine Rodburg and The Tutors of the Writing Center at Harvard University
• Academic Essay Writing, Some Guidelines: Department of Economics, Carleton University
• The Writing Process: Writing Centre Resource Guide, LibGuides at Dalhousie University
• Research Papers: KU Writing Center, the University of Kansas
• Unpacking the Topic: University of Southern Queensland
• Economic Issues: PIIE, Peterson Institute for International Economics
• Areas of Research: EPI, Economic Policy Institute
• Top 100 Economics Blogs Of 2023: Prateek Agarwal, Intelligent Economist
• Current Environmental Economic Topics, Environmental Economics: US EPA, United States Environmental Protection Agency
• Hot Topics in the U.S. Economy: The Balance
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A senior honors thesis is a chance to investigate an idea, theoretical issue, policy problem, or historical situation of keen economic interest. All economics senior thesis writers are required to take an ECON 985 Senior Thesis Seminar.  Attention Juniors: See the  Ec Thesis Canvas page for a recording of the Ec Senior Thesis Interest meeting and other key details!

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• Check out Why to Write a Senior Thesis in Economics  by Professor Benjamin Friedman.
• Our  Writing Economics guide is a great reference for thesis writers, as well as for anyone doing any writing in economics (course paper, RAship, etc.).
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The Study Blog : Research topics

50+ Economics research Topics and Topic Ideas for dissertation

The ultimate goal of economic science is to improve the living conditions of people in everyday lives. Economists study how to utilize the available scarce resources to maximize value and thus profits. The concerns of economics today are largely focused on issues such as opportunity cost, consumption and production, borrowing, saving, investments, occupations and employment, trades markets, pricing and human behavior concerning making economic decisions.

Are tight deadlines, clashing assignments, and unclear tasks giving you sleepless nights?

Do not panic, hire a professional essay writer today.

Given that economics covers a lot of issues in society today coupled with the multitude of research studies within the existing literature, many economics students find it difficult to find the most suitable economic research topic for their undergraduate project, master’s thesis, and dissertations. Technological advancement has also increased the pace of transformation and globalization creating new areas in economics that are worth research. Our economics experts have curated a list of research paper topics in economics that you can use to get the perfect research paper topic.

Micro-Economics Research Topics

Microeconomics deals with the economic behavior of individual isolated units of the economy like an individual, a household, a company, and industry. Micro-economists study factors that influence economic choices, markets and their key elements such as demand and supply and analyze markets and determine the prices for goods and services that best allocate the available limited resources. Some of the best research topics in microeconomics that you can use for your thesis or dissertation include:

1. The effect of income changes on consumer choices

2. The effect of labor force participation on the economy and budget – A comparison

3. The impact of marital status on the labor force composition: A case of [your country] economy

4. The difference in the consumption attitude in [your country] over the last decade – Critical analysis of consumer behavior trends

5. The relationship between salary levels and ‘economic convergence’ in [your country]?

6. Analyzing salary inequalities in [your country] and the forces behind such inequalities.

7. The evolution of consumption in [your country] over the last 10 years: Trends and consumer behavior.

8. Dynamics of the Gini index as a reflection of the problem of inequality in income 

9. Cashless economy: The impact of demonetization on small and medium businesses

10 Privatization of Public Enterprises and its implications on economic policy and development

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Macroeconomics Research Topics

1. The relationship between economic growth and unemployment in [your country]

2. Global recession and factors that contribute to it.

3. Impact of government expenditure on economic growth in [country]

4. The impact of company income tax revenue on the developing economies- A comparative analysis of Kenya, India, and Nigeria

5. The relationship between common stock prices and inflation in [your country]

6. The relationship between inflation and government spending in [your country] economy.

7. The effect of currency devaluation on small and medium firms- A case study of selected multinationals in [your country]

8. The relationship between internet connectivity and productivity in the workplace 

9. The evolution of the stock market in [your country]: Causes and consequences

10 Unemployment and regional mobility of labor in [your country]

11 A comparison of the United States unemployment to the rest of the world

Research Topics on International Trade

1. The relationship between economic growth and international trade

2. To what extent does a currency union affect trade: A case of the United States

3. What are the gains and losses of international trade for developing countries?

4. Foreign direct investment in the United States: Determinants and impact

5. The effects of the banana crisis on the Jamaican and British economies

6. The impact of Brexit on small and middle businesses in the UK

7. The relationship between foreign direct investment and wages- A comparative analysis of USA and China

8. The roles of exchange rate and exchange rate regime in the US export

9. The importance of international trade in developing countries

10 To what extent are the gains of less developed countries from tradeliberalization exaggerated?

Environmental economics research paper topics

Economic activities such as production have a significant impact on the environment such as pollution and depletion of natural resources. Environmental economics studies these impacts and other environmental issues. Below are some of the best research paper topics in environmental economics.

1. An economic examination of waste disposal programs in the United States

2. Man-made environmental disasters: who bears the economic liability?

3. The economics of land- a comparative analysis of land sharing and land sparing in the United States

4. The impact of waste disposal programs to America’s Environmental Policy: An economic evaluation

5. Water management and conservation policies in the United States and the UK- a comparative analysis

6. The economic implications of climate policy changes because of different climate change assessment mechanisms

7. Investigating the cost of organizational environmental analysis in the United States

8. What are the determinants of climate policy formulation in the United States? An economic scrutiny

9. The economic perspectives of distribution of natural resources across boundaries

10 The impact of technological innovation for clean and green products on the environment

11 The impact of work-life balance on social eco-systems: perspectives from the United States

12 The relationship between financial subsidies and generation of eco-friendly products

Research Paper Topics on Behavioral Economics

Behavioral economics examines the psychology behind economic activities and economic decision making. It examines the limitation of the assumption that individuals are perfectly normal. Good behavioral economics topics cover subjects such as bounded rationality, irrational exuberance, and choice architecture. 

1. Inducing choice paralysis: how retailers bury customers in an avalanche of options

2. The behavioral economics of discounting- A case study of amazon

3. Pricing and the decoy effect; how corporations ‘nudge’ consumers to spend more

4. Big data and implications for behavioral economics

5. A study of how the United States market benefitted from behavioral economics theory

6. How has behavioral economics influenced the real-world context? A case of online purchase behavior

7. Weight management through behavioral economics: use of incentives

8. What motivates consumers? A behavioral economics perspective

9. Using behavioral economics to help in reducing substance abuse

10 Addressing lifestyle management for diabetes through behavioral analysis- insights from the US healthcare sector

You may also like: The little secret why your friends are earning better grades

Development Economics research paper topics

1. The impact of multinational commodity trading through the development economic perspective

2. The impact of globalization on income distribution in emerging economies

3. Investigating the relationship between migration and development economics

4. Budgeting and decision making by low-income earners in emerging economics

5. Investigating the relationship between family planning, labor force, and income fluctuations

6. The impact of natural disasters on development in emerging economies

7. The impact of population growth on development economics- review of India

8. The determinants of high performing institutions in emerging economies

9. Comparative economic patterns of villages across Virginia

10 Aid and economic growth of developing economies- a review

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102 Best Econometrics Research Topics

College and university professors require students to write about econometrics research topics to gauge their comprehension of the relationship between mathematical economics, statistics, and economics.

The purpose of this integration is to provide numerical values to economic relationships and parameters. Usually, econometrics involves economic theories and their presentation in mathematical forms and the empirical study of business. Perhaps, this integration explains why some students struggle to choose topics for research in econometrics.

What Is Econometrics?

As hinted, econometrics is an economics branch that focuses on the relationships between economics, statistics, and mathematical economics. Ideally, econometrics entails the quantitative application of mathematical and statistical models using data to test hypotheses and develop economic theories while forecasting future trends based on historical data. Econometricians subject real-world data to various statistical trials while comparing and contrasting the results against the idea under examination.

Writing an econometric research paper is a process that starts with the selection of an interesting topic. Once you’ve chosen a title and the supervisor approves it, embark on extensive research using the prompt from your teacher. Proceed by gathering and analyzing all relevant information from different sources. Engaging in in-depth study and comprehensive analysis will enable you to write an informative paper that will compel the educator to award you the best grade in your class. Below are the steps to follow to write a high-quality econometric thesis or essay.

Write the introduction: Introduce your econometrics topic and tell the audience why it’s crucial. Also, include a thesis statement summarizing the entire paper. Describe the theoretical model: Tell the readers about the theoretical models to structure the empirical work. Present the data: Describe the data, whether time series or cross-sectional. Use descriptive statistics data and graphics if possible. Present the empirical model: Explain the model you intend to estimate and the functional form you intend to use. Present your empirical results: This section presents empirical results using a table to summarize them. Conclude the paper: Describe lessons from the research and state whether it supports the theory. Also, suggest approaches for future research on the topic.

Your paper should also include a reference section comprising the information sources you used to gather data.

Interesting Econometrics Paper Topics

Maybe you know the process of writing a paper on an econometrics topic but don’t have an idea to explore. If so, consider these exciting econometrics paper ideas.

• How privatizing public enterprises could affect economic development and policy
• Cashless economy: How demonetization affects medium and small businesses
• How Gini index dynamics reflect the income inequality problem
• Consumption evolution over the last decade: Consumer behavior and trends
• Investigating salary inequalities and the forces behind them
• How income changes affect consumer choices
• How does allowing the labor force to participate in public budgeting affect the economy
• How the marital status affect the labor force composition
• How consumption attitudes have changed over the last decade
• How economic convergence relates to salary levels
• How income affects life insurance
• The consequences of leaving the rat race
• Testing Okun’s Law in the U.S
• Analysis of spending on disposable income and imports
• Comparing the unemployment rate in the United States to the rest of the world
• Regional labor mobility and unemployment
• Stock market evolution: Analyzing the causes and effects
• How internet productivity relate to connectivity in the workplace
• How currency devaluation affects medium and small companies
• How government spending and inflation relate in an economy
• The relationship between stock prices and inflation in a country
• How income tax revenue affects a developing economy
• How government expenditure affects economic growth
• Factors contributing to the global recession
• How a country’s unemployment rate relates to economic growth

Any of these topics can be an excellent basis for an econometrics paper. However, you require extensive research about any of these topics to develop a winning thesis.

Undergraduate Econometrics Project Ideas

Maybe your school or faculty requires you to write an econometrics paper to graduate from university. In that case, consider these econometrics research topics for undergraduates.

• Analyzing the impact of income inequality on the poverty level
• Analyzing gender differences in education between developing and developed countries
• How immigration affects unemployment in the European Union
• How economic growth relates to trade
• Are immigrants more in countries with a high income?
• How high taxations affect GSP
• Analyzing the relationship between local income level and house prices
• How income, education, and life expectancy affect the human development index
• How inflation affects national savings
• How life expectancy relates to national income
• How financial development affects the economic growth of a country
• Crime index versus the average education years
• Investigating the correlation between youth unemployment and minimum wage
• How economic prosperity relate to government systems
• Economic factors that affect housing prices in the United States
• Economic factors contributing to homelessness in the U.S
• Socioeconomic and economic determinants of infant mortality
• Econometric analysis: Impact of trade barriers
• Why matching methods are essential in econometrics
• How a randomized experiment can aid econometrics
• Why instrumental variables matter in econometrics
• Can experts predict the future using econometrics?
• Econometrics as a numerical estimates source for economic relationship variables
• Ways of testing economic theories that econometricians present
• Regression discontinuity: Describe its application

These are great ideas to consider for an econometrics project. Nevertheless, you require sufficient time to research any of these topics and write a winning essay or dissertation.

Easy Econometric Research Topics

Perhaps, you need an easy topic for an econometrics paper. Maybe you have a short time to complete your assignment. In that case, these econometrics topics are ideal for you.

• Theory suggestion- The initial econometrics methodology step
• Why estimating variables is important
• The importance of Proof-reading once you have evaluated the variables
• Why testing a hypothesis matters
• The impact of poverty on education
• How poverty relates to childhood obesity
• Human development and income inequality
• The link between religion and ideologies on a country’s economy
• Income and importation- How do they connect?
• Personal income and life expectancy- What is the connection?
• The effects of minimum wage on unemployment
• Investigating monetary policies and bank regulations
• A study of the economies of scale
• The impact and relevance of comparative institutional economics
• Analyzing the effect of making a company international
• Studying the macroeconomics of rare events
• Investigating customer behavior towards green products
• Trade patterns: Investigating different trade patterns and their applications
• Different stochastic processes concepts
• Accurate stochastic processes prediction

Any of these topics can be a sound basis of a simple paper. Nevertheless, you still require time to research the idea and analyze data to develop a quality paper.

Financial Econometrics Research Paper Topics

Perhaps, you want to write an academic paper about a financial econometrics topic. If so, consider these ideas.

• How does bank regulation affect the economy?
• A critical look into the loan markets
• How a cashless policy affects the economy
• Structure and implementation of the monetary policy
• Lessons to learn from financial crises
• Investigating regression models
• Statistical tools in the financial econometrics

These are good topics to explore in financial econometrics. However, follow the prompt from your teacher to write an impressive paper.

Econometrics Empirical Project Ideas FExor Ph.D. Level

Maybe you’re pursuing your Ph.D. and want to write a dissertation about an econometrics topic. In that case, this category comprises excellent ideas for you.

• Analytical statistics versus theoretical statistics
• The effects of the low and high demand of labor on an economy
• The arbitrage pricing theory
• How goods production and productivity affect econometrics at a national level
• Applied econometrics- Its essence in turning qualitative economic ideas into quantitative ones
• Definition, relevance, and application of the general line model
• Theoretical econometrics’ study and application
• The macro behavioral theory
• Panel data methods applications- A microeconomics subsection
• The impacts of the spillover effect on econometrics
• The impact of labor supply on a local economy
• Why labor markets are essential to econometrics
• What is micro-econometrics modeling?
• Micro-econometrics methods and applications
• Statistical tools and their use in financial econometrics

This list also has fantastic economics paper topic ideas. But like the topics in the other sections, each of these notions requires extensive research to write a quality paper.

Exciting Econometrics Questions

Maybe you need a question to serve as the basis of your econometrics research. In that case, here are exciting queries to inspire you.

• What is the current state of your country’s economy?
• What’s the difference between the current state of the local and international trades?
• What are the latest forecasts for the global economy?
• How do the foreign exchange market and the local businesses relate?
• What’s the impact of exportation and importation on the local economy?
• How do businesses monopolies affect a country’s economy?
• What are the effects of international banks on the local banking sector?
• How does population growth affect economic development?
• How can a natural disaster affect an emerging economy?
• What techniques do companies use to “nudge” consumers into spending more?

This comprehensive list has some of the best econometrics ideas for essays and research papers. Nevertheless, having a topic is not a guarantee that you’ll write a good essay. You might still need help with your assignment after choosing a topic.

Get Help With Thesis About Econometrics Topic

Our crew comprises the most skilled, talented, and experienced econometrics writers. These professionals have helped many students complete their econometrics papers on varied topics. If stuck with an econometric essay or an MBA thesis , for example, and require a cheap dissertation writing service , our native, educated experts can help you. We’re the most knowledgeable econometrics writers online. Contact us now to get a custom, high-quality research paper on any econometrics topic!

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How To Pick A Topic For Your Economics Research Project Or Master's Thesis

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One of the biggest and most exciting challenges of a young academic's career is coming up with that first economics research topic. Knowing how much is riding on the decision, it can also be pretty stressful. With so much to consider, we thought it would be easier to break the decision-making process down into some key points. Consideration of each will give you the best chance possible to make sure the topic of your economics Master's thesis is the right one - both for you personally and for your future career.

Without further ado, read on for our advice on how to pick a topic for your economics thesis.

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1. Make sure it's something you're interested in

This sounds obvious, but you should make sure that the project you choose is of interest to you. If you're going to be working on a project for months or even longer, then it has to be something which you are engaged with.

The best way to keep engaged is to pose a question for your project to which you want to know the answer. Think back over the lectures you've attended and the books you've read, and consider what issues you enjoyed discussing and thinking about. If there was ever a topic which you came across and enjoyed studying, but didn't have the time or resources to investigate more, this is your chance to dive deep and become an expert.

2. Get inspired by previous students' projects

If you're unsure where to start, or don't know what sort of project would be appropriate for your course, it's a great idea to look at previous students' projects. In most universities you'll be able to access previous student theses in the library, so you should take advantage of this resource.

While you should never copy someone else's idea, you can use it as inspiration. For example, perhaps someone has done a project on the economic implications of an international policy within a certain country. Your project could look at the implications of that same policy in a different country. Or you could look at a similar policy in a different period of history.

Additionally, many alumni will still have links with your university, so it may be possible to get in contact with them directly. If someone has written about a topic you are interested in, do not hesitate to request a meet up to pick their brains. Most academics relish the opportunity to discuss their own research, so there is no reason to be shy. In any case, it is always fascinating meeting those more experienced than yourself who have remained in the field.

3. Ask your lecturers or supervisor for advice

Once you have one or more ideas about thesis topics, you'll want to ask for advice from people who have experience in assessing projects. You don't want to do a lot of work on a project idea, only to hear much later that your supervisor thinks your topic is not a good choice.

Do some basic preparation before meeting with a supervisor or lecturer. Make sure you understand the basic facts of the topic area in which you're interested, and that you have some ideas about what your research question will be and what methods you'll use to study it.

Further, make sure that you get feedback on your idea early in the process. This advice extends to the rest of the research project too. It is your supervisor's job to guide you, so keep in regular contact with them throughout the course of your research.

4. Pick something original, but not too obscure

It’s common to struggle to come up with new economics research topic ideas, but you don't want to do the same project which has been done by a million students before. Not only will this be uninteresting to you, but it will be uninteresting to the person marking your thesis.

Try to come up with a novel approach or a new topic to study. Perhaps there is a new type of data analysis you could use to study an old problem from a new angle. Perhaps new data has been made available, and an older study could be challenged or reaffirmed by studying the new data.

However, be wary of anything too obscure – you don't want to be stuck with no materials or resources to work from. To reiterate the above, definitely run your more ambitious topic ideas by your supervisor to help avoid the pitfall of going too niche and really falling down the rabbit hole.

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5. Choose a small and specific topic

One general tip when coming up with a project or research question is to think smaller. If you don't know a lot about a topic, you won't yet appreciate all the subtleties and complexities it contains. You might think that you can produce a great project on the impact of the introduction of the Euro in Ireland, for example, but this topic is way too broad to cover in a Master's project.

Choosing a topic that is far too broad like the above example is a common mistake that new students make when they are unfamiliar with academic research. Get more specific, and your project will not only be more manageable, but you will actually get to the crux of something.

It may seem counterintuitive, or scary - it can seem impossible to write 50 or more pages about an obscure question. But, it’s much better for your final evaluation to maintain a small scope and conduct very high-quality research about that small topic, rather than attempt to explain a large phenomenon alone and fill up an entire paper with surface-level analysis.

6. Consider an interdisciplinary topic

If you're thinking of economics Master's thesis ideas but find yourself interested in another academic subject, you may have the opportunity to learn about that field as a part of your research project. You could consider a project which touches on a subject like history, sociology, business, politics, or psychology, for example.

The advantage of this is that you can try out learning information and methods from another field to see if studying it further would interest you. It will also help you to create a unique and memorable project, as most of your fellow students will likely study a topic which is based purely in economics.

However, this might also make your project a little harder, as you will have more new information to grasp than others – but it can also be very rewarding for ambitious and engaged students. If you wish to take this route, strongly consider finding a secondary supervisor within the interdisciplinary field who can guide you along with your more economics-focused supervisor. This can even be beneficial for your career, as you become well-versed in a niche set of skills that employers or PhD programs would find attractive.

7. Check for available data

If you’re doing an empirical project, the success or failure of your thesis may very well come down to data availability. It’s very important to have an idea of what data to use for your study before you commit to a topic. If you have the world’s greatest research idea, but the data to study it just isn’t available, you’re out of luck.

To avoid this heartbreaking situation, search for usable data as early in the process as possible. This search can even help you narrow down your topic area of focus, and pick a specific, small-scope research question within your field of interest.

Perhaps you’re interested in the effect of malaria prevention programs on children’s economic outcomes in the future, but panel studies haven’t yet been completed in your region of interest. If you search for data, you might find a completed panel dataset that studied a similar disease, or one that studied malaria in a different country. These types of searches can help you pick a related, doable, and properly-scoped research question without wasting time racing towards a dead end.

8. Meticulously plan your experiment

Of course, if you’re running an experiment, you can create your own dataset. This situation presents its own, equally important challenges.

A poorly designed experiment can render your data biased or unusable even after months of work. To avoid this type of catastrophe, spend as much time as you can designing the experiment, checking over all your assumptions meticulously, and seeking feedback and approval from your supervisor to ensure that the experiment is designed well.

Studying examples of experimental designs that led to published studies in prominent journals is highly recommended. Modeling your experiment on successful ones in the past is a great way to ensure your experiment runs smoothly.

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Economics Dissertation Topics

Economics is about making choices in the face of scarcity and uncertainty and ensuring that resource allocation is effectively and efficiently done. What was popularised by writers, researchers and philosophers such as Adam Smith in the 1770s, has become a field with significant relevance and importance in today’s society that is highly financialised and globalised. Dating back to medieval scholastics as well as literature published back in the 15th and 18th century, through the 19th century, the concerns of economics have largely focused on aspects such as choices of individuals, borrowing, money, consumption and production, occupations and employment, markets, trade, pricing of assets, taxes, and most recently human behaviour in relation to economic decisions.

There are multitudes of research studies, within the existing literature, that have been conducted in relation to the above concerns and many of these have resulted in a number of models that attempt to provide possible explanations to real world problems. As the world continues to evolve with the advent of technological advancements that have increased the pace of transformation and globalisation, new areas in economics have emerged as worthwhile research targets. The following are possible economics dissertation topics to choose from for your academic research project in economics:

Economic Geography Dissertation Topics

Economic sociology dissertation topics, institutional economics dissertation topics, microeconomics dissertation topics, macroeconomics dissertation topics, regional development dissertation topics.

• Employment Economics Dissertation Topics

Financial Economics Dissertation Topics

This is the area in economics academic literature that is concerned with the role of geographic location and place with the economical outcomes. It focuses on describing and analyzing patterns and trends in human behavior and activity to gain understanding of the processes and drivers that shape and affect the economic and cultural landscapes. Within regions and localities, there are great dynamics that shape the nature and extent of economic activity. Below are some suggestions for economics dissertation topics on economic geography:

• The impact of local and regional cultures on shaping entrepreneurial economic development.
• Can entrepreneurial attitude be exported? The role of emigrants in introducing new entrepreneurial attitudes.
• Differences of entrepreneurial behaviour in rural and urban areas.
• Is there any relationship between mature industries dominating small towns and their local cultural factors?
• The role of local culture in promoting regional innovation networks.
• National, regional and local policies to support local clusters: opportunities.
• How can policy support the creation of a local cluster?
• Are networks affected by local proximity? Differences between co-localised and dispersed networks.
• The likelihood impact of Brexit on policy outcomes that shape the local economy in UK cities.
• A model for the development of information and communication technology incubators in the UK. Analysis of the concentration of Top 50 IT companies.
• What is causing regional divergence? An analysis of the richest and poorest regions in the UK.
• The economic geography of recession. Difference between regional and city economics in the UK.
• Why are housing built in flood-prone coastal areas?
• Understanding educational progression at the local level: A comparison of the North and South cities in the UK.
• How COVID has contributed to house price volatility in various cities in the UK.
• How the COVID lockdown has affected social life of big cities.
• Will coronavirus cause a big city exodus?

Economic sociology refers to sociological aspects influencing the economic indicators and their relationship with social outcomes. It is the study of how the material conditions of life are produced and reproduced through social processes and broadly covers the sociology of markets and the sociology of consumptions. Possible economics dissertation topics in this area include:

• The role of social networks in supporting innovation activities in mature industries.
• The financial and non-financial support of family in the development of successful entrepreneurship.
• The private network as the facilitator of the firm start-up.
• Exploring the differences between trust and power in local productive systems.
• Social contracts and peer-pressure as the source of traditional industry development in the UK.
• Can cultural mix increase productivity in creative industries? Evidence from the UK.
• The role of social and intellectual capital in rural places in the UK.
• Is social capital a critical factor in the British creative industries?
• How can universities take advantage of social networks to induce entrepreneurial action among their students?
• The role and contribution of social entrepreneurship in the UK.
• The economic impact of migration from different regions of the world to the UK. Comparative analysis between the EU and the non-EU migration.
• Is the relationship between economic and social development linear?
• The convergence of economic systems in the wake of globalisation and their implications on the social development across developed, emerging and developing national economies.

Institutional Economics relates to a variety of economics traditions that are concerned with social institutions which are linked to consumption, distribution and production of goods and services as well as the underlying corresponding social relations. In essence, Institutional Economics has a relatively broad inquiry scope and is considered to have relatively close ties with other disciplines such as anthropology, economic sociology, psychology, economic history, behavioural economics, behavioural finance, physical science, management and business studies, and nowadays neuro, cognitive and brain science. This implies that there are various dissertation topics that can fall under the Institutional Economics bracket; some of these include the following.

• An assessment of the implications of Institutional Economics methodologies for the analysis of the property market.
• A study of how the theoretical assumptions of the New Institutional Economics’ (NIE) micro analytical level influence a firm’s choice of governance structures.
• How do habits and routines affect productivity? The case of (an industry).
• How does the culture mix impact on the organisation of firms in the UK?
• Resilience to economic shrinking in an emerging economy: the role of social capabilities.
• Financial constraint, trust, and export performances: The case of UK SMEs.
• Efficiency in the property market in the UK: An institutional perspective.
• Transaction costs and economic development.
• A resource-based theory analysis to firm co-operation.
• How can transaction costs economics account for inter-firm collaboration?
• Ownership and control in the UK: An institutional analysis.
• Institutions and policies of economic freedom: different effects on income and growth.
• How does job experience relate to entrepreneurship? Evidence from the UK.
• Educational aspects of entrepreneurship. The role of formal school in promoting entrepreneurial capacities in the UK.
• Latent entrepreneurship: the UK vs Europe.

Microeconomics has to do with supply and demand, and with the way they interact in various markets. It is andconcerned with how economic agents, that is, individual decision-makers (both consumers and producers) behave in different economic settings. The overarching goal of microeconomic research is to identify the incentives of various agents and trade-offs that they may face. To understand behaviour of individuals in terms of their economic decision-making, researchers build various models, use data and conduct experiments.

The following are the examples of dissertation topics on ‘Microeconomics’:

• The evolution of household consumption in the UK over the last 10 years: Trends in consumer behaviour.
• Are mergers and acquisitions related to productivity in UK firms?
• Is the minimum wage still relevant in the UK economy?
• Is the British retail sector becoming less oligopolistic? An analysis of the impact of new supermarkets.
• Are British oligopolistic markets really oligopolistic?
• Conditions for the existence of a knowledge firm.
• Characteristics of the innovative organisation in the UK.
• Are UK firms more innovative than their European counterparts?
• The impact of the European regional policy on British small and medium enterprises (SMEs).
• The energy market in the UK: A microeconomic approach.
• The impact of regulation on British industries: The case study of Uk energy sector.
• Does firm size affect firm profits? Evidence from telecommunication firms in the UK.
• Game theory and decision theory.

Macroeconomics is concerned with how the overall economy works and how all markets interact to generate big phenomena that economists call aggregate variables. It studies such things as employment, gross domestic product, inflation, national income, employment and the interaction between the global economy and financial markets.

The following are the examples of dissertation topics on ‘Macroeconomics’:

• How do interest rates affect consumption in the UK?
• What is the role of the dollar evolution in UK spending?
• The magnitude of the impact of oil price changes on UK consumption.
• The impact of Brexit on consumer spending in the UK.
• The impact of Brexit on employment and labour in the UK.
• What factors influence the salary inequality across the UK?
• The evolution of the exchange rates in the UK: Causes and consequences.
• Negative interest household savings in the UK.
• The impact of the common agriculture policy (CAP) on British agriculture.
• Economic growth and productivity. The UK in the century transition.
• Interest rates and foreign direct investment in the UK.
• Brexit and foreign direct investment in the UK.
• Monetary policy pass-through for the UK after Brexit.
• Development of UK monetary policy overtime.
• Does inflation affect firms’ profits in the UK?
• Macroeconomic determinant of house prices in the UK.
• Unemployment and regional mobility of labour in the UK.
• The impact of finance on growth: The case of UK.
• Economic growth and unemployment: Is there a relationship in the UK?
• The macroeconomics of SMEs entrepreneurship in the UK.
• Global economic recession and factors that contribute to it.
• Is the UK insurance system economically viable?
• How does the Greek financial crisis impact the EU economy overtime?
• The impact of COVID income inequality in the UK.
• Coronavirus and wage inequality: The case of UK manufacturing sector.
• COVID and economic recession: Will the impact be more pronounced than the 2007 financial recession?
• Role of information technology in economic development.
• Social inequality: the difference between wealth and income.
• Why is insurance necessary for the economic development of a country?
• How is the tax burden shared between buyers and sellers in the UK?
• Asymmetric information and adverse market selection: A case study of UK insurance market.
• Economic rent and transfer earnings in the UK.

This discipline is focused on understanding the dynamics of regions as smaller economies with their own circumstances and outcomes. The focus is on the internal working of the regional economies as well as on their interaction with other regions. There is a component of economic growth and development at a regional level. The suggestions below will give you further ideas for your economics dissertation topics:

• Regional development and profitability of the businesses. What are the factors underpinning this relationship?
• The contribution of entrepreneurial networks for regional development.
• Implications and development of regional development policy in the UK.
• Infrastructures and regional development. How can the rail and road network explain the differences in the development of regions in the UK.
• Regional comparative advantage in natural resources and regional development.
• Effect of regional policy surrounding start-ups on regional development: more new firms or better old ones?
• The role of broadband internet technology in regional development: co-relation between internet speeds and regional development?
• Public investment and regional output: Evidence from the UK regions.
• Robustness of regional institutions and development: How to search for a link?
• Regional aspects of entrepreneurship in the UK.
• Differences between types and extent of entrepreneurship and unemployment across England, Wales, Scotland and Northern Ireland.
• Convergence and endogenous growth differences between South East England and the rest of the UK.

Employment/Labour Economics Dissertation Topics

Employment is considered to be a key concept in economics and its significance is reflected in the perception that people at work are seen as individuals/groups of individuals involved in the production of services and goods. Such production requires human capital and time; thus, organisations of different types pay people that are involved in the production process providing them with income that is later used to boost economic activity. In macroeconomics, low rates of national employment may signal underdevelopment or long-lasting depression while high rates of national employment may signal economic growth and development. Below is a list of dissertation topics that cover the area of employment economics.

• Work from home or office and employee wellbeing: The case of the COVID pandemic.
• A study of how flexible employment affects political support for social policy protection.
• The impact of gender inequality in employment on economic growth and workforce productivity.
• The influence of economic cycles on employment, workforce productivity and innovation: a study of manufacturing industries.
• Local pools on unemployment in the UK: Looking for similarities.
• Factors determining self-employment in the UK.
• The effects of minimum wages on British employment.
• How does technological innovation affect British unemployment? Evidence from the manufacturing industries.
• A comparison of self-employment across Europe: Where does the UK stand?
• Government policies in support of self-employment: Evidence from the UK.
• The effects of immigration on British employment and productivity.

Financial economics concentrates on exchanges in which money of one type or another is likely to appear on both sides of a trade. Financial markets are crucial in facilitating these exchanges at a relatively reduced transaction cost. In many such cases, the amount of money to be transferred in the future is uncertain. Financial economists thus deal with both time and uncertainty. Often the latter is called risk. Financial economics is thus a branch of economics that examines the utilisation and distribution of economic resources in financial markets in which decisions must be made under uncertainty.

The following are examples of dissertation topics on ‘Financial Economics’:

• How has the coronavirus pandemic affected the UK stock market?
• How is the FTSE affected by interest rates?
• Does CAPM measure the risk of stocks listed on the FTSE 100?
• How does the behaviour of the FSTE 100 affect economic growth?
• Behavioural finance: A study on the motivation of British investors.
• The determinants of corporate debt in the UK.
• The role of private equity and debt market in the finances of SMEs in the UK.
• Do SMEs achieve higher profitability rates than large corporations in the UK?
• The financial structure of British firms: A comparison with the European Union.
• Financial markets and financial intermediation in the UK.
• Temporary and permanent components of asset prices in the UK.
• Capital and financial structure of UK companies.
• Investor protection and corporate governance: Comparison between EU and US financial market.
• Political uncertainty on asset prices.

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Digital Commons @ USF > College of Arts and Sciences > Economics > Theses and Dissertations

Economics Theses and Dissertations

Theses/dissertations from 2023 2023.

Natural Disasters and Human Capital: Empirical Evidence from Indonesia , Lei Lv

Theses/Dissertations from 2022 2022

Two Essays in Applied Microeconomics: Retirement, Income Inequalities, and other Economic Indicators of Health and Life Satisfaction , Zahra Akbari

The Impact of Critical Illness Insurance among Older Adults in China , Jiaosi Li

Theses/Dissertations from 2021 2021

Essays on SNAP Participation, BMI, and Food Purchasing Decisions , Samaneh Ghadyani

Reference-Dependent Choice on Digital Platforms , Joshua K. Kaisen

Theses/Dissertations from 2020 2020

Effects of the 340B Drug Pricing Program on Hospitals’ Prescribing Behavior, Patient Mix, and Quality of Care , Yilu Dong

Does Hedging Success Matter? An Empirical Study of Jet Fuel Hedging in the U.S. Airline Industry , Brian Hornung

Essays in Applied Public Policy and Health Economics , Stephen W. Poteet

Theses/Dissertations from 2019 2019

Essays in Applied Microeconomics , Lijuan Feng

Essays on Health, Healthcare, Job Insecurity and Health Outcomes , Ichiro Nakamoto

Theses/Dissertations from 2018 2018

Essays in Applied Microeconomics , John Hartman

Essays on Family-Friendly Policies, Child Planning and Children’s Early-Age Outcomes , Stefani Milovanska-Farrington

Theses/Dissertations from 2017 2017

Education and Health Impacts of an Affirmative Action Policy on Minorities in India , Robin Dhakal

Testing the Medical Arms Race Hypothesis: a Spatial Approach , Robyn M. Kibler

Essays in Health Economics , Olga Petrova

Theses/Dissertations from 2016 2016

Impact of Health Insurance for the Poor on Labor Market Out comes: Evidence from Indonesia. , Youssef Fassi Fehri

Essays in Health and Development Economics , John Bosco Oryema

Assessing Property Value Impacts of Access to Bus Rapid Transit (BRT): Case Study of the Cleveland HealthLine , Victoria A. Perk

An Exploration of Adolescent Obesity Determinants , Anastasia King Smith

The Impact of Criminal Justice Interventions and Social Policies on Family Violence: Theory and Evidence , Sianne Diana Vijay

Theses/Dissertations from 2015 2015

Two Essays Examining Organizational Performance , Stacey Alexis Gelsheimer

Theses/Dissertations from 2014 2014

Generic Competition and Price Regulation in the European Union Pharmaceutical Market: The Case of Cardiovascular Medicines , Berna Colak

Social Interactions In Breast Cancer Prevention Among Women In The United States , Natallia Gray

Discrepancies in Labor Market Outcomes From Migration Evidence From Colombia , Liza Beatriz Pena

Theses/Dissertations from 2013 2013

Bayesian Estimation of Panel Data Fractional Response Models with Endogeneity: An Application to Standardized Test Rates , Lawrence Kessler

Essays in Happiness Economics , Boris Nikolaev

Measuring Technical Efficiency of the Japanese Professional Football (Soccer) League (J1 and J2) , Dan Zhao

Theses/Dissertations from 2012 2012

Essays in Sports Economics , Daniel Mark Chin

Theses/Dissertations from 2011 2011

Modeling Endogenous Treatment Eects with Heterogeneity: A Bayesian Nonparametric Approach , Xuequn Hu

Internet Use and Economic Development: Evidence and Policy Implications , Joseph J. Macdougald

Theses/Dissertations from 2010 2010

The Interaction Between Urban Form and Transit Travel , Sisinnio Concas

The Effect of Land-Use Controls on Urban Sprawl , Marin V. Geshkov

The Role of Rater Motivation in Personnel Selection Validation Studies , Dan Ispas

Theses/Dissertations from 2009 2009

Globalization, Migration and the U.S. Labor Market for Physicians: The Impact of Immigration on Local Wages , Finnie B. Cook

Medicare Part D Program: Prescription Drug Plan Copayment Structure and Premium Sensitivity , Rui Dai

Theses/Dissertations from 2008 2008

The Effects of Depressed Mood on Academic Outcomes in Adolescents and Young Adults , Robert Christopher Jones

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Malaria, Labor Supply, and Schooling in Sub-Saharan Africa , Taiwo Abimbola

Determinants of female labor force participation in Venezuela: A cross-sectional analysis , Betilde Rincon de Munoz

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Economics Essay Topics: Valuable Tips

Economics is a subject that has gained immense popularity in recent times. It deals with interesting economics topics like the production, distribution, and consumption of goods and services. Moreover, it is a social science that provides insights into how individuals, businesses, and governments make decisions that affect the overall economy. Given its importance, economics essays have become a crucial part of the curriculum for students pursuing various degrees.

Short Description

In this article, our essay writer will take you on a journey through various exciting topics in economics. We'll cover everything from big-picture concepts like macroeconomics to more focused ideas like microeconomics, international trade, and economic policy. Our goal is to help you find the perfect topic for your economics essay—one that matches your interests and demonstrates your understanding of how economics affects the real world.

🎓 What is Economics: Understanding the Importance

Before we dive into the different economics essay topics, it is crucial to understand what economics is and its importance. Economics is a social science that deals with the production, distribution, and consumption of goods and services. It is concerned with how individuals, businesses, and governments make decisions about allocating resources to satisfy their unlimited wants and needs.

Economics as a science provides a framework for analyzing society's production, distribution, and consumption of goods and services. It helps us understand how markets work and how they can be improved to increase efficiency and welfare. Moreover, economic principles have significant implications for various social issues, including poverty, inequality, environmental sustainability, and public policy. By studying economics essay topics, we can gain insights into these issues and develop policies that promote rapid economic growth and social welfare.

When it comes to economics, the range of essay topics is vast and covers various aspects of human interactions on different levels. With so many possibilities to explore, we understand the difficulty of narrowing down your options. That's why our ' write me an essay ' experts are here to offer their guidance and support. We're ready to help you select the ideal topic if you wish to learn how to write informative essay on economics.

🧩 Tips for Choosing Your Ideal Topic

Choosing a topic is the first and most crucial step in writing an economics essay. Your topic will determine the direction and scope of your essay. Here are some tips for choosing the ideal topic from our finance essay writing service :

Tip 1: Understand the relevance of economics to daily life and choose a topic with practical applications.

Recognize that economics plays a significant role in our everyday lives, as it encompasses the production, distribution, and consumption of goods and services. Therefore, when selecting a topic, ensure its societal relevance. For instance, you might consider exploring 'The Impact of Automation on Employment Rates' or 'The Role of Government Regulations in Controlling Inflation.'

Tip 2: Opt for narrow economics research topics to make them more manageable and allow for in-depth exploration.

Instead of tackling broad subjects like 'International Trade,' narrow down your focus to something like 'The Effects of Tariffs on Small Businesses in the Agriculture Sector' or 'The Relationship Between Exchange Rates and Export Performance in Developing Countries.' By delving deeper into a specific aspect, you can provide more detailed financial analysis and insights.

Tip 3: Conduct preliminary research to identify current topics, debates, and research gaps.

Before finalizing your topic, engage in preliminary research to gain an understanding of recent trends and issues in economics. Explore academic journals, news articles, and books to discover areas that warrant further exploration. For example, you might come across intriguing research gaps such as 'The Impact of Cryptocurrencies on Financial Markets' or 'The Role of Behavioral Economics in Shaping Consumer Decision-Making.'

Tip 4: Seek input from peers or professors to enhance your topic selection process.

Collaborate with your peers during brainstorming sessions to generate fresh ideas and gain different perspectives on potential topics. Additionally, seek guidance from your professor, who can offer valuable insights and feedback to refine your chosen topic. For instance, you can discuss your ideas with classmates and receive suggestions like 'The Influence of Economic Policies on Income Inequality' or receive expert advice from your professor on 'The Implications of Globalization on Developing Economies.'

And if you want expert assistance in applying theoretical concepts to practice and creating an exceptional paper, then address your request to our custom essay writing services .

🗒 Economics Essay Topics: A Comprehensive List

If you are looking for a comprehensive list of interesting economics essay topics, you have come to the right place. Here are some ideas that you can consider:

• The role of central banks in fiscal policy: You can explore the role of central banks in implementing fiscal policies, such as setting interest rates, regulating money supply, and managing inflation.
• The effects of automation on the labor market: You can explore the impact of automation on the labor market, including the displacement of workers and the emergence of new job opportunities.
• The impact of immigration on the labor market: You can explore the impact of immigration on the labor market, including the effects on wages, employment opportunities, and economic growth.
• The economics of climate change: You can explore the economic impact of climate change, including the costs of mitigation and adaptation measures, the effects on industries, and the role of governments in addressing the issue.
• The economics of healthcare: You can explore the economics of healthcare, including the costs of healthcare, the role of insurance companies, and the impact of healthcare policies on the economy.
• The role of government in the economy: You can explore the role of governments in implementing economic policies, including fiscal and monetary policies, and the impact of these policies on the economy.
• The impact of globalization on the economy: You can explore the economic implications of globalization, including the effects on industries, trade, and employment opportunities.
• The economics of poverty and inequality: You can explore the economics of poverty and inequality, including the causes and effects of poverty and inequality and the role of governments in addressing these issues.
• The economics of education: You can explore the economics of education, including the costs of education, the impact of education on economic growth, and the role of governments in promoting education.
• The role of competition in the marketplace: You can explore the role of competition in promoting economic growth, innovation, and consumer welfare.
• The economics of entrepreneurship: You can explore the economics of entrepreneurship, including the factors that promote entrepreneurship, the impact of entrepreneurship on the economy, and the role of governments in promoting entrepreneurship.
• The impact of quantitative easing on economic recovery: You can explore the consequences of large-scale asset purchases and their influence on inflation, employment rates, and overall economic stability.
• The economics of renewable energy transition: You can analyze the costs, benefits, and challenges associated with adopting renewable energy technologies and their potential effects on energy prices, employment, and environmental sustainability.
• The role of technological innovation in economic development: You can examine the impact of research and development, technological diffusion, and digitalization on productivity, job creation, and competitiveness in various sectors of the economy.
• Behavioral economics and consumer decision-making: You can examine concepts such as cognitive biases, heuristics, and framing effects and explore how these factors shape consumer behavior, market outcomes, and the effectiveness of public policies.

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🧮 Macroeconomics Essay Topics

Macroeconomics is a fascinating and complex field of study that aims to understand the overall performance of an economy. It takes into account various factors such as economic growth, inflation, unemployment, and trade policies. If you are looking for some thought-provoking macroeconomics essay topics, here are a few that you might find interesting:

• The role of digital currencies (cryptocurrencies) in the global economy and their impact on monetary policy.
• The economics of aging populations: Analyzing the challenges and opportunities associated with demographic shifts.
• The impact of trade wars and protectionist policies on global economic growth and international trade.
• The economics of happiness and well-being: Investigating the relationship between economic factors and subjective measures of life satisfaction.
• The role of government spending in stimulating economic growth and addressing income inequality.
• The economics of urbanization: Examining the effects of urban growth on productivity, income distribution, and resource allocation.
• The impact of automation and artificial intelligence on employment and the future of work.
• The economics of climate change: Analyzing the economic costs and benefits of climate policies and the transition to a low-carbon economy.
• The role of financial markets in transmitting economic shocks and their implications for systemic risk and financial stability.
• The economics of inequality: Investigating the causes and consequences of income and wealth disparities within and between countries.

📉 Microeconomics Essay Topics

Microeconomics focuses on the behavior of individual consumers and businesses in the market. The principles of microeconomics are used to analyze how these entities make decisions, interact with each other, and influence the overall economy. If you're interested in exploring this field further, here are some microeconomics essay topics that you might find interesting:

• Behavioral economics and its implications for consumer decision-making.
• The impact of artificial intelligence and automation on labor economics and income inequality.
• Pricing strategies in the sharing economy: A critical analysis of platforms like Uber and Airbnb.
• The economics of addiction: Analyzing the factors influencing consumer behavior and the effects on individual welfare.
• The role of information and asymmetry in financial markets: Examining the impact on investor decision-making and market efficiency.
• Game theory and its application in strategic decision-making in business and economics.
• The economics of innovation and entrepreneurship: Studying the factors that drive technological advancements and their impact on economic growth.
• Health economics: Analyzing the relationship between healthcare expenditure, access, and health outcomes.
• The economics of education: Investigating the determinants of educational attainment and its effects on individual and societal welfare.
• The economics of discrimination: Examining the economic implications of bias based on race, gender, or other factors in labor markets and beyond.

🎏 International Economics Essay Topics

International economics deals with the economic interactions between countries, including trade, investment, and migration. Here are some international economic relations topics:

• The impact of trade liberalization on developing economies: A comparative analysis of different trade policies and their effects on economic growth and income distribution.
• The role of foreign direct investment (FDI) in promoting technological transfer and industrial development in emerging markets.
• The economics of global supply chains: Analyzing the benefits and challenges of interconnected production networks in the context of international trade.
• The implications of Brexit on the European Union and the United Kingdom: Assessing the economic consequences and potential trade arrangements.
• The role of international institutions (such as the World Trade Organization, International Monetary Fund, etc.) in governing global economic relations: Evaluating their effectiveness and relevance in modern world economics.
• The economics of currency exchange rates: Examining the factors influencing exchange rate movements and their impact on trade and investment flows.
• The rise of protectionist policies and their implications for global trade: Assessing the economic consequences and potential risks associated with trade barriers.
• The impact of international migration on labor markets and economic development: Analyzing the effects of immigration policies and the role of migrant workers in host countries.
• The economics of foreign aid: Evaluating the effectiveness of foreign aid in promoting economic development and reducing poverty in recipient countries.
• The economics of regional economic integration: Examining the benefits and challenges of regional trade agreements, such as the European Union or the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN).

📉 Behavioral Economics Essay Topics

Behavioral economics combines psychology and economics to analyze how people make decisions. Here are some behavioral economics essay topics:

• The influence of socio-economic norms on consumer behavior and decision-making.
• The impact of framing effects on individual choices and decision-making processes.
• The role of default options in shaping consumer behavior and encouraging desirable outcomes.
• Prospect theory and its implications for understanding risk-taking behavior.
• Nudging strategies and their effectiveness in promoting positive behaviors and outcomes.
• The role of behavioral economics in understanding and addressing irrational financial decision-making.
• Behavioral economics interventions to promote sustainable and environmentally friendly behaviors.
• The psychology of pricing: How behavioral economics principles influence consumer perception of value.
• The influence of emotional factors on consumer decision-making processes.
• Behavioral biases in investment decision-making and their impact on financial markets.

🚑 Healthcare Economics Essay Topics

Healthcare economics analyzes how the healthcare system operates, including the costs and benefits of healthcare interventions. Here are some healthcare economics essay topics:

• The impact of healthcare insurance coverage on access to care and health outcomes.
• The role of economic incentives in shaping healthcare provider behavior and the quality of care.
• The economics of pharmaceutical pricing and its effects on affordability and access to medications.
• The cost-effectiveness of preventive healthcare interventions and their implications for healthcare spending.
• The economics of healthcare disparities and the role of social determinants of health in driving inequities.
• The impact of healthcare market competition on prices, quality, and innovation.
• The role of health technology assessment in informing healthcare resource allocation decisions.
• The economic evaluation of alternative healthcare delivery models, such as telemedicine and community health clinics.
• The impact of healthcare reforms and policy changes on healthcare costs and access to care.
• The economics of aging populations and the challenges of financing healthcare for the elderly.

🌎 Consumerism Essay Topics

Consumerism refers to the cultural and economic mindset that encourages the acquisition of goods and services. Here are some consumerism essay topics:

• The effects of consumerism on individual well-being and happiness.
• Consumerism and its impact on environmental sustainability and resource depletion.
• The role of advertising and marketing in shaping consumer behavior and promoting consumerism.
• Consumerism and its relationship with materialism and the pursuit of social status.
• The influence of consumerism on personal debt and financial well-being.
• Consumerism and its effects on societal values, culture, and social relationships.
• The ethical implications of consumerism and the responsibilities of consumers in a globalized world.
• The role of consumer activism in challenging and reshaping consumerism.
• Consumerism and its impact on mental health and psychological well-being.
• The future of consumerism in the digital age and the rise of e-commerce and online shopping.

📚 Economic History Topics

Economic history is a field of study that examines the historical development of economic systems, policies, and institutions, as well as the social, political, and cultural factors that have influenced economic outcomes over time. Here are the 10 interesting topics:

• The Industrial Revolution and its impact on economic development and societal transformation.
• Economic consequences of colonialism: examining the long-term effects on former colonies' economies.
• The Great Depression: causes, consequences, and policy responses.
• The role of institutions in economic development: a comparative study of different countries and regions.
• The rise and fall of economic empires: analyzing the economic power of ancient civilizations.
• The economic effects of wars and conflicts throughout history.
• The evolution of money and financial systems: from barter to digital currencies.
• The economic impact of technological advancements: case studies from different time periods.
• Economic inequality over time: trends, drivers, and consequences.
• The role of trade and globalization in shaping economic history: exploring patterns and impacts.

📊 Public Finance Research Topics

Public finance research focuses on the study of the government's role in the allocation, distribution, and management of resources within an economy. It encompasses the analysis of public revenues, expenditures, taxation policies, and the impact of government interventions on economic outcomes and social welfare. Here are 10 relevant economics papers topics:

• The impact of government spending on economic growth and development.
• The effectiveness of fiscal policy in managing economic downturns and promoting stability.
• The role of taxation in income redistribution and reducing income inequality.
• The economics of public debt and its implications for economic stability and future generations.
• The efficiency and equity implications of different tax systems (e.g., progressive, regressive, flat).
• The economic consequences of public infrastructure investment and its role in promoting economic productivity.
• The evaluation of government subsidies and incentives in promoting desired behaviors and industries.
• The economics of public-private partnerships and their effectiveness in delivering public goods and services.
• The impact of social welfare programs on labor supply, poverty reduction, and income mobility.
• The economics of environmental policy and the use of market-based instruments to address externalities.

Closing Remarks 

To wrap up, economics is a subject that offers insights into how the world works. It provides a framework for analyzing complex social issues, including poverty, inequality, and public policy. Therefore, exploring economics essays topics is an excellent way of understanding the subject's relevance in the real world.

By following the tips for choosing your ideal topic and exploring the comprehensive list of economics topics for an essay, you can write an insightful and inspiring paper that contributes to the ongoing dialogue on economics.

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Home > SBS > ECONOMICS > Economics Department Dissertations Collection

Economics Department Dissertations Collection

Current students, please follow this link to submit your dissertation.

Dissertations from 2023 2023

Essays on International Trade and Economic Growth , Mateo Hoyos, Economics

THREE ESSAYS ON MACROECONOMICS AND DEVELOPMENT , Guilherme Klein Martins, Economics

THREE ESSAYS ON ALLOCATION OF COSTS AND BENEFITS, CREDIT, AND TIME , Anamika Sen, Economics

Dissertations from 2022 2022

THREE ESSAYS on GROWTH and DISTRIBUTION in DUAL ECONOMIES , Adam Aboobaker, Economics

WORK, WORKERS, AND REPRODUCING SOCIAL CONTROL: RACIAL POST-FORDISM AND ALTERNATIVE SYSTEMS , Hannah Rebecca Archambault, Economics

Employer Power: Consequences for Wages, Inequality and Spillovers , Ihsaan Bassier, Economics

THREE ESSAYS ON SOCIAL JUSTICE ISSUES: HEALTH, GENDER, AND POLICING , Travis B. Campbell, Economics

CREATION OF ECONOMIC GROWTH AND COMPETITION THROUGH GREEN-INDUSTRIAL POLICIES , Camilo A. Gallego, Economics

Essays on Unpaid Care and Gender Inequality in India , Leila Gautham, Economics

THREE ESSAYS ON TECHNOLOGICAL CHANGE, THE STATE, AND EMPLOYMENT , Baris Guven, Economics

CONSTRAINTS AND ACCOMMODATED PREFERENCE: ESSAYS ON GENDER AND SOCIOECONOMIC INEQUALITY IN PAKISTAN , Sana Khalil, Economics

Essays on Anti-Discrimination Legislation Enforcement and Sex-Based Discrimination in U.S. Labor Markets , Carly McCann, Economics

THREE ESSAYS ON THE POLITICAL ECONOMY OF THE CFA FRANC , Francis Perez, Economics

THREE ESSAYS ON THE POLITICAL ECONOMY OF CULTURAL PRODUCTION AND CREATIVE LABOR , Luke Pretz, Economics

FOUR ESSAYS ON PEACE CONSOLIDATION AND ETHNIC RECONCILIATION IN POSTWAR SRI LANKA , Narayani Sritharan, Economics

The Political Economy of Consumer Credit Expansion and Real Exchange Rate Policy in Dual Economies , Esra Nur Ugurlu, Economics

Dissertations from 2021 2021

Three Essays on Learning and Conflict Applied to Developing Countries , Amal Ahmad, Economics

The Political Economy of the Cost of Foreign Exchange Intervention , Devika Dutt, Economics

CARE WORK IN CHILE’S SEGREGATED CITIES , Manuel Garcia, Economics

ESSAYS ON EXCHANGE RATE SHOCKS AND THE POLITICAL ECONOMY OF LOCAL FISCAL POLICY IN BRAZIL , Raphael Rocha Gouvea, Economics

THREE ESSAYS ON THE POLITICAL ECONOMY OF GLOBAL INACTION ON CLIMATE CHANGE , Tyler A. Hansen, Economics

Three Essays on Socio-Institutional Ecosystems & Labor Structures , Jonathan Donald Jenner, Economics

CONSTRUCTING A MARXIAN INPUT-OUTPUT MODEL CONSIDERING THE TURNOVER OF CAPITAL AND REVISITING THE FALLING-RATE-OF-PROFIT HYPOTHESIS , Junshang Liang, Economics

Three Essays on Structural Change and Labor Market Adjustment in Developing Countries , Karmen Naidoo, Economics

THREE ESSAYS ON EMPLOYMENT IMPACTS OF LABOR MARKET POLICIES , Simon Dominik Sturn, Economics

THREE ESSAYS ON LABOR AND MARRIAGE MARKETS: FARM CRISIS AND RURAL-TO-URBAN MIGRATION IN THE UNITED STATES, 1920-1940 , Jennifer Withrow, Economics

Dissertations from 2020 2020

THREE ESSAYS ON GENDER-SPECIFIC EMPLOYMENT OUTCOMES OF MACROECONOMIC POLICIES , SELIN SECIL AKIN, Economics

A New Economic History of Deindustrialization: Class Conflict and Race in the Motor City , Jackson Allison, Economics

THREE ESSAYS ON MICROECONOMIC ANALYSIS OF POLITICAL ECONOMY: EXPLOITATION, TECHNICAL CHANGE, AND MULTISECTORAL ANALYSIS , Weikai Chen, Economics

Essays on Food Security, Gender and Agriculture , Berna Dogan, Economics

THREE ESSAYS ON THE ECONOMICS OF CORPORATE GOVERNANCE , Kuochih Huang, Economics

THREE ESSAYS ON POLITICAL ECONOMY OF UNEVEN DEVELOPMENT: SPACE, CLASS AND STATE IN PAKISTAN , Danish Khan, Economics

ESSAYS ON WOMEN AND WORK IN INDIA AND ON OTHER-REGARDING PREFERENCES , Sai Madhurika Mamunuru, Economics

THREE ESSAYS ON THE ROLE OF INSTITUTIONS IN INDIAN AGRICULTURE , Kartik Misra, Economics

Neoliberal Capitalism and the Evolution of the U.S. Healthcare System , Samantha Sterba, Economics

THREE ESSAYS ON THE PAST AND FUTURE OF SOCIALISM , Mihnea Tudoreanu, Economics

THREE ESSAYS ON THE ECONOMICS AND POLITICAL ECONOMY OF THE “SCHOOL-TO-PRISON PIPELINE” , Anastasia C. Wilson, Economics

Endogenous Money, Corporate Liquidity Preferences and the Transformation of the U.S. Financial System , Yeo Hyub Yoon, Economics

Dissertations from 2019 2019

The Historical and Legal Creation of a Fissured Workplace: The Case of Franchising , Brian Callaci, Economics

Essays on the Minimum Wage, Immigration, and Privatization , Doruk Cengiz, Economics

Bangladesh's Energy Policy: Economic, Environmental, and Climate Change Impacts , Rohini Kamal, Economics

THREE ESSAYS ON THE POLITICAL ECONOMY OF THE ENVIRONMENT , An Li, Economics

REVISITING THE EAST ASIAN MIRACLE: LABOR REGIMES, PROFITABILITY AND ACCUMULATION , Zhongjin Li, Economics

Dimensions of US Global Financial Power: Essays on Financial Sanctions, Global Imbalances, and Sovereign Default , Mariam Majd, Economics

THE POLITICAL ECONOMY OF ACCUMULATION IN SOUTH AFRICA: Resource Extraction, Financialization, and Capital Flight as Barriers to Investment and Employment Growth , Seeraj Mohamed, Economics

STATE-LOCAL GOVERNMENT SPENDING, MACROECONOMIC FISCAL POLICY, AND THE BUSINESS CYCLE , Amanda Page-Hoongrajok, Economics

Essays on Monetary Policy in Developing Countries: Income Distribution, Housing and Unemployment , Zhandos Ybrayev, Economics

Resource Rents, Public Investment and Economic Development: The Case of Bolivia , Raul Zelada Aprili, Economics

Dissertations from 2018 2018

Three Essays on Governments and Financial Crises in Developing Economies, 1870-1913 , Peter H. Bent, Economics

Constraining Labor's “Double Freedom”: Revisiting the Impact of Wrongful Discharge Laws on Labor Markets, 1979-2014 , Eric Hoyt, Economics

SOCIAL STRUCTURE OF ACCUMULATION IN TURKEY (1963 – 2015) , Osman C. Icoz, Economics

Stumbling Toward the Up Escalator: How Trends in International Trade, Investment, and Finance Have Complicated Latin America’s Quest for Sustainable, Diversified Economic Development , Mary Eliza Rebecca Ray, Economics

Forms of Naturalism in Seminal Neoclassical Texts: An Analysis and Comparison of Léon Walras, John Bates Clark, and William Stanley Jevons , Mark Silverman, Economics

THREE ESSAYS ON CHILD WELFARE IN CÔTE D’IVOIRE , Didier Wayoro, Economics

Dissertations from 2017 2017

Currency Mismatch and Balance Sheet Effects of Exchange Rate in Turkish Non-Financial Corporations , Serkan Demirkilic, Economics

The Impacts of Foreign Labor Migration of Men on Women's Empowerment in Nepal , Pratistha Joshi Rajkarnikar, Economics

Real and Nominal Effects of Exchange Rate Regimes , Emiliano Libman, Economics

Three Essays on International Economics and Finance , Juan Antonio Montecino, Economics

THREE ESSAYS ON “DOING CARE”, GENDER DIFFERENCES IN THE WORK DAY, AND WOMEN’S CARE WORK IN THE HOUSEHOLD , Avanti Mukherjee, Economics

Dissertations from 2016 2016

Colonial and Post-Colonial Origins of Agrarian Development: The Case of Two Punjabs , Shahram Azhar, Economics

Three Essays on the Social Determinants of Early Childhood Health and Development , Andrew Barenberg, Economics

ELITE CAPTURE, FREE RIDING, AND PROJECT DESIGN: A CASE STUDY OF A COMMUNITY-DRIVEN DEVELOPMENT PROJECT IN CEARÁ, BRAZIL , Jessica Carrick-Hagenbarth, Economics

Three Essays on Sustainable Development in China: Social, Economic and Environmental Aspects , Ying Chen, Economics

Three Essays on Women's Land Rights in Rural Peru , Rosa L. Duran, Economics

Three Essays on Economic Stages and Transition , Ricardo R. Fuentes-Ramírez, Economics

Three Essays on U.S. Household Debt and the Sources of Systemic Financial Fragility , Thomas Herndon, Economics

Essays on Household Health Expenditures, National Health Insurance and Universal Access to Health Care in Ghana , EVELYN KWAKYE, Economics

Microfinance, Household Indebtedness and Gender Inequality , Theresa Mannah-Blankson, Economics

Three Essays on Labor Market Friction and the Business Cycle , Jong-seok Oh, Economics

Three Essays on Sustainability , Mark V. Paul, Economics

The Political Economy of Smallholder Incorporation and Land Acquisition , Alfredo R. Rosete, Economics

Employment and Family Leave Mandates: Three Essays on Labor Supply and Demand, Nontraditional Families, and Family Policy , Samantha Schenck, Economics

Endogenous Capacity, Multiple Equilibria and Thirlwall's Law: Theory and an Empirical Application to Mexico: 1950 - 2012. , Juan Alberto Vázquez Muñoz, Economics

Three Essays on the Macroeconomic Impacts of Rent Seeking , Kurt von Seekamm, Economics

Dissertations from 2015 2015

Essays on Growth Complementarity Between Agriculture and Industry in Developing Countries , Joao Paulo de Souza, Economics

Structural Transformation, Culture, and Women’s Labor Force Participation in Turkey , yasemin dildar, Economics

Essays on Information, Income, and the Sharing Economy , Anders F. Fremstad, Economics

Essays on Inequality, Credit Constraints, and Growth in Contemporary Mexico , Leopoldo Gómez-Ramírez, Economics

Three Essays on Macroeconomic Implications of Contemporary Financial Intermediation , Hyun Woong Park, Economics

The Labor Share Question in China , Hao Qi, Economics

Three essays on economic inequality and environmental degradation , Klara Zwickl, Economics

Dissertations from 2014 2014

Common Pool Resources and Rural Livelihoods in Stung Treng Province of Cambodia , Pitchaya Boonsrirat, Economics

The financialization of the nonfinancial corporation in the post-1970 U.S. economy , Leila Emami Davis, Economics

The Financial Underpinnings of the EU Crisis: Financial Deregulation, Privatization, and Asymmetric State Power , Nina Q. Eichacker, Economics

THE FINANCIAL SECTOR AND INCLUSIVE DEVELOPMENT IN AFRICA: ESSAYS ON ACCESS TO FINANCE FOR SMALL AND MEDIUM-SIZED ENTERPRISES IN SOUTH SUDAN AND KENYA , James A. Garang, Economics

OUTPUT FLUCTUATIONS AND ECONOMIC GROWTH IN LATIN AMERICA IN THE AFTERMATH OF THE GREAT RECESSION , Gonzalo Hernandez Jimenez, Economics

TEMPORARY EMPLOYMENT AND EARNINGS INEQUALITY IN SOUTH KOREA , Hyeon-Kyeong Kim, Economics

Three Essays in Macroeconomic History , Joshua W. Mason, Economics

Essays on the Evolution of Inequality , Cem Oyvat, Economics

FINANCIALIZATION OF THE COMMODITIES FUTURES MARKETS AND ITS EFFECTS ON PRICES , Manisha Pradhananga, Economics

Productive Stagnation and Unproductive Accumulation in the United States, 1947-2011. , Tomas N. Rotta, Economics

Advertising and the Creation of Exchange Value , Zoe Sherman, Economics

Understanding Income Inequality in the United States , Mark J. Stelzner, Economics

CARE TIME IN THE U.S.: MEASURES, DETERMINANTS, AND IMPLICATIONS , Joo Yeoun Suh, Economics

Essays on the minimum wage , Ben Zipperer, Economics

Dissertations from 2013 2013

Credit Chains, Credit Bubles, and Financial Fragility: Explaining The U.S. Financial Crisis of 2007-09 , Thomas L Bernardin, Economics

A Knife Hidden in Roses: Development and Gender Violence in the Dominican Republic , Cruz Caridad Bueno, Economics

Sustaining Rural Livelihoods in Upper Svaneti, Republic of Georgia , Robin J Kemkes, Economics

Contract as Contested Terrain: An Economic History of Law and the Rise of American Capitalism , Daniel P MacDonald, Economics

Essays on the Rising Demand for Convenience in Meal Provisioning in the United States , Tamara Ohler, Economics

Social Emulation, the Evolution of Gender Norms, and Intergenerational Transfers: Three Essays on the Economics of Social Interactions , Seung-Yun Oh, Economics

Decollectivization and Rural Poverty in Post-Mao China: A Critique of the Conventional Wisdom , Zhaochang Peng, Economics

Capitalist Crisis and Capitalist Reaction: The Profit Squeeze, the Business Roundtable, and the Capitalist Class Mobilization of the 1970s , Alejandro Reuss, Economics

The Economics of Same-Sex Couple Households: Essays on Work, Wages, and Poverty , Alyssa Schneebaum, Economics

The Political Economy of Cultural Production: Essays on Music and Class , Ian J. Seda Irizarry, Economics

Essays Of Human Capital Formation , Owen Thompson, Economics

Dissertations from 2012 2012

Knowledge, Gender, and Production Relations in India's Informal Economy , Amit Basole, Economics

Macroeconomic and Microeconomic Determinants of Informal Employment: The Case of Clothing Traders in Johannesburg, South Africa , Jennifer E Cohen, Economics

The Relationship Between Mass Incarceration and Crime in the Neoliberal Period in the United States , Geert Leo Dhondt, Economics

Fair Trade, Agrarian Cooperatives, and Rural Livelihoods in Peru , Noah Enelow, Economics

Organic Farming and Rural Transformations in the European Union: A Political Economy approach , Charalampos Konstantinidis, Economics

The Sources of Financial Profit: A Theoretical and Empirical Investigation of the Transformation of Banking in the US , Iren G. Levina, Economics

A Minskian Approach to Financial Crises with a Behavioural Twist: A Reappraisal of the 2000-2001 Financial Crisis in Turkey , Mathieu Perron-Dufour, Economics

Essays on Urban Sprawl, Race, and Ethnicity , Jared M. Ragusett, Economics

Agriculture and Class: Contradictions of Midwestern Family Farms Across the Twentieth Century , Elizabeth Ann Ramey, Economics

Women In Conflict, Peacebuilding And Reconstruction: Insights From The Aftermath Of Nepal's Maoist Insurgency , Smita Ramnarain, Economics

Money, Reality, and Value: Non-Commodity Money in Marxian Political Economy , Joseph Thomas Rebello, Economics

Three essays on oil scarcity, global warming and energy prices , Matthew Riddle, Economics

The Political Economy of Agrarian Change in the People's Republic of China , Zhun Xu, Economics

Dissertations from 2011 2011

State Hegemony and Sustainable Development: A Political Economy Analysis of Two Local Experiences in Turkey , Bengi Akbulut, Economics

Financial evolution and the declining effectiveness of US monetary policy since the 1980s , Hasan Comert

Why China Grew: Understanding the Financial Structure of Late Development , Adam S. Hersh, Economics

Solving the "Coffee Paradox": Understanding Ethiopia's Coffee Cooperatives Through Elinor Ostrom's Theory of the Commons , Susan Ruth Holmberg, Economics

Migration, Remittances And Intra-Household Allocation In Northern Ghana: Does Gender Matter? , Lynda Joyce Pickbourn, Economics

Youth and Economic Development: A Case Study of Out-of-School Time Programs for Low-Income Youth in New York State , Kristen Maeve Powlick, Economics

The Real Exchange Rate And Economic Development , Martin Rapetti, Economics

Essays on International Reserve Accumulation and Cooperation in Latin America , Luis Daniel Rosero, Economics

Three Essays on Racial Disparities in Infant Health and Air Pollution Exposure , Helen Scharber, Economics

Dissertations from 2010 2010

Capitalism in Post-Colonial India: Primative Accumulation Under Dirigiste and Laissez Faire Regimes , Rajesh Bhattacharya, Economics

Uneven Development and the Terms of Trade: A Theoretical and Empirical Analysis , Bilge Erten, Economics

Gendered Vulnerabilities After Genocide: Three Essays on Post-Conflict Rwanda , Catherine Ruth Finnoff, Economics

The Employment Impacts of Economy-wide Investments in Renewable Energy and Energy Efficiency , Heidi Garrett-Peltier, Economics

Household Employer Payroll Tax Evasion: An Exploration Based on IRS Data and on Interviews with Employers and Domestic Workers , Catherine B. Haskins, Economics

Racial Inequality and Affirmative Action in Malaysia and South Africa , Hwok-Aun Lee, Economics

Essays on Behavioral Labor Economics , Philip Pablo Mellizo, Economics

Three Essays on the Political Economy of Live Stock Sector in Turkey , Hasan Tekguc, Economics

The Impact Of Public Employment On Health , Wei Zhang, Economics

Dissertations from 2009 2009

Effort, work hours, and income inequality: Three essays on the behavioral effects of wage inequality , Michael Carr

Essays on investment, real exchange rate, and central bank in a financially liberalized Turkey , Deger Eryar

Essays On Investment, Real Exchange Rate, And Central Bank In A Financially Liberalized Turkey , Deger Eryar, Economics

Labor Turnover in the Child-Care Industry: Voice and Exit , Lynn A. Hatch, Economics

Three Essays on Conflict and Cooperation , Sungha Hwang, Economics

Economic Reforms in East African Countries: The Impact on Government Revenue and Public Investment , Adam Beni Swebe Mwakalobo, Economics

Post-Marxism After Althusser: A Critique Of The Alternatives , Ceren Ozselcuk, Economics

Essays on Financial Behavior and its Macroeconomic Causes and Implications , Soon Ryoo, Economics

Skill Mismatch and Wage Inequality in the U.S. , Fabian Slonimczyk, Economics

Linkages Between Inequality And Environmental Degradation: An Interregional Perspective , Marina S Vornovytskyy, Economics

Dissertations from 2008 2008

Migrant women and economic justice: A *class analysis of Anatolian -German women in homemaking and cleaning services , Esra Erdem

Emigrant or sojourner? The determinants of Mexican labor migration strategies to the United States , Florian K Kaufmann

Macrofinancial risk management in the U.S. economy: Regulation, derivatives, and liquidity preference , Marcelo Milan

Essays on behavioral economics , Wesley Jose Pech

The impact of land ownership inequality on rural factor markets , Fatma Gul Unal

Three essays on family care, time allocation, and economic well -being , Jayoung Yoon

Dissertations from 2007 2007

Capital flight and foreign direct investment in the Middle East and North Africa: Comparative development and institutional analysis , Abdullah Almounsor

Investment under financial liberalization: Channels of liquidity and uncertainty , Armagan Gezici

Three essays on social dilemmas with heterogeneous agents , Mark Howard

Between the market and the milpa: Market engagements, peasant livelihood strategies, and the on -farm conservation of crop genetic diversity in the Guatemalan highlands , S. Ryan Isakson

Late neoclassical economics: Restoration of theoretical humanism in contemporary mainstream economics , Yahya Mete Madra

Inequality and the Human Development Index , Elizabeth Anne Stanton

Dissertations from 2006 2006

Institutional settings and organizational forms: Three essays , Alper Duman

Labor market characteristics and the determinants of political support for social insurance , Anil Duman

State power, world trade, and the class structure of a nation: An overdeterminist class theory of national tariff policy , Erik E Guzik

Unions and the strategy of class transformation: The case of the Broadway musicians , Catherine P Mulder

Children's work and opportunities for education: Consequences of gender and household wealth , Sevinc Rende

The economics of immigration: Household and employment dynamics , Maliha Safri

Dissertations from 2005 2005

Capital flight from Southeast Asia: Case studies on Indonesia, Malaysia, the Philippines, and Thailand , Edsel L. Beja

Rethinking municipal privatization: A Marxian class analysis of the privatization of New York City's Central Park , Oliver David Cooke

Financial liberalization and its distributional consequences: An empirical exploration , Arjun Jayadev

Three essays on gender, land rights, and collective action in Brazil's rural political economy , Merrilee Mardon

Land markets, female land rights and agricultural productivity in Paraguayan agriculture , Thomas Masterson

Workers' struggles and transformations of capitalism at industrial enterprises in Russia, 1985–2000 , Maxim V Maximov

Economy and society: Class relations and the process of economic growth , Erik K Olsen

Gender, liberalization and agrarian change in Telangana , Smriti Rao

The contradictory imperatives of New Deal banking reforms. , Ellen D. Russell, Economics

Equity in community -based sustainable development: A case study in western India , Priya Parvathy Sangameswaran

Mandated wage floors and the wage structure: Analyzing the ripple effects of minimum and prevailing wage laws , Jeannette Wicks-Lim

Public enterprises in mixed economies: Their impact on economic growth and social equity , Andong Zhu

Dissertations from 2004 2004

An economic analysis of prison labor in the United States , Asatar P Bair

Three essays on income, inequality and environmental degradation , Rachel A Bouvier

The implementation and enforcement of environmental regulations in a less developed market economy: Evidence from Uruguay , Marcelo F Caffera

Race, altruism and trust: Experimental evidence from South Africa , Justine Claire Keswell

Exchanging entailments: The contested meaning of commodity exchange , Philip M Kozel

Three essays on capital account liberalization and economic growth: New measures, new estimates and the experience of South Korea , Kang-Kook Lee

Enterprise hybrids and alternative growth dynamics , Kenneth M Levin

Social interaction and economic institution , Yongjin Park

Research and policy considerations in the valuation and the allocation of environmental and health commodities , Mihail Samnaliev

Immiserizing growth: Globalization and agrarian change in Telangana, South India between 1985 and 2000 , Vamsicharan Vakulabharanam

Social networks and labor market outcomes: Theoretical expansions and econometric analysis , Russell E Williams

Dissertations from 2003 2003

Three essays on the evolution of cooperation , Jung-Kyoo Choi

Economic size and long -term growth: An empirical analysis of the consequences of small economic size on investment, productivity and income growth , Pavel E Isa

Essays on categorical inequality, non-linear income dynamics and social mobility in South Africa , Malcolm M Keswell

The effectiveness of tax incentives in attracting investment: The case of Puerto Rico , Carlos F Liard-Muriente

A theoretical and statistical exploration into the effects of morals, personality and uncertainty on hypothetical bias in contingent valuation , Joseph D Ogrodowczyk

The role of the stock market in influencing firm investment in China , Feng Xiao

Dissertations from 2002 2002

Essays on the threat effects of foreign direct investment on labor markets , Minsik Choi

An international analysis of child welfare , Nasrin Dalirazar

Fiscal faux pas? An empirical analysis of the revenue and expenditure implications of trade liberalization , Barsha Khattry

Property from the sky: The creation of property rights in the radio spectrum in the United States , Elizabeth M Kruse

Three essays on China's state owned enterprises: Towards an alternative to privatization , Minqi Li

From welfare rights to welfare fights: Neo -liberalism and the retrenchment of social provision , John Arthur O'Connor

Political community and individual gain: Aristotle, Adam Smith and the problem of exchange , Kimberly Kaethe Sims

Rethinking prostitution: Analyzing an informal sector industry , Marjolein Katrien van der Veen

Dissertations from 2001 2001

Land and labor markets among paddy producers in the Nepalese Tarai , Ravi Bhandari

What drives equity values: fundamentals or net flows? An empircal analysis of the 1982--1999 United States stock market boom , Lawrence Lee Evans

Investment, labor demand, and political conflict in South Africa , James S Heintz

Education, Inequality and Economic Mobility in South Africa , Thomas Nathaniel Hertz

Employer work -family programs: Essays on policy implementation, employee preferences, and parental childcare choices , Sally Jane Kiser

Valuing environmental health risks: A comparison of stated preference techniques applied to groundwater contamination , Tammy Barlow McDonald

Endogenous quality and intra-industry trade , Edward Allan McPhail

Perceptions of Massachusetts family and consumer sciences education professionals regarding the importance and use of the National Standards for Family and Consumer Sciences Education in Massachusetts , Jo Ann Pullen

From feudal serfs to independent contractors: Class and African American women's paid domestic labor, 1863–1980 , Cecilia M Rio

A home of one's own: Overcoming gender and familial status barriers to homeownership , Judith K Robinson

Springfield Armory as industrial policy: Interchangeable parts and the precision corridor , Bruce K Tull

Dissertations from 2000 2000

Intergroup inequality, social identity and economic outcomes , Katherine E Baird

Engendering Globalization: Household Structures, Female Labor Supply and Economic Growth , Elissa Braunstein

Capital, conditionality, and free markets: The International Monetary Fund, the World Bank, and the effects of the neoliberal transformation in Latin America and the Caribbean , Andres Carbacho-Burgos

Rural institutions, poverty and cooperation: Learning from experiments and conjoint analysis in the field , Juan-Camilo Cardenas

Understanding the equal split as a bargaining convention and the role of residual claimancy in team production: Three essays in behavioral and experimental economics , Jeffrey Paul Carpenter

Enforcing market -based environmental policies , Carlos A Chavez Rebolledo

A comparative analysis of three economic theories focusing upon the international trade of hazardous waste (the case of electric arc furnace dust) , Amy Silverstein Cramer

The political economy of transformation in Hungary , Anita Dancs

Cross -media transfers of pollution and risk , Janine Marie Dombrowski

Essays on endogenous preferences and public generosity , Christina Margareta Fong

Con nuestro trabajo y sudor: Indigenous women and the construction of colonial society in 16th and 17th century Peru , Karen B Graubart

Banks, insider lending and industries of the Connecticut River Valley of Massachusetts, 1813–1860 , Paul Andre Lockard

Existence value: A reappraisal and cross -cultural comparison , Billy Manoka

Quality management systems and the estimation of market power exertion , Corinna Michaela Noelke

The power of personality: Labor market rewards and the transmission of earnings , Melissa Anne Osborne

Accumulation and European unemployment , Engelbert Richard Stockhammer

Modeling Superfund: A hazardous waste bargaining model with rational threats , Mary Anderson Taft

Welfare, inequality, and resource depletion: A reassessment of Brazilian economic growth, 1965–1993 , Mariano Torras

Dissertations from 1999 1999

Steadying the husband, uplifting the race: The Pittsburgh Urban League's promotion of black female domesticity during the Great Black Migration , Nina Elizabeth Banks

The origins of parallel segmented labor and product markets: A reciprocity-based agency model with an application to motor freight , Stephen V Burks

R&D, advertising, and profits: Economic theory, empirical evidence, and consequences for transfer pricing policy , David W DeRamus

Rethinking demand: A critique and reformulation of Marxian theories of price , David Leo Kristjanson

Wealth, the power to set terms, and the financing and control of firms , Paul N Malherbe

Intra -family transfers and the household division of labor: A case study of migration and remittance behavior in South Africa , Dorrit Ruth Posel

Transportation network policy modeling for congestion and pollution control: A variational inequality approach , Padma Ramanujam

The political economy of organized baseball: Analysis of a unique industry , Ross David Weiner

Dissertations from 1998 1998

The internationalization of production and its effects on the domestic behavior of United States manufacturing multinational firms , James Michael Burke

Neoliberal and neostructuralist theories of competitiveness and flexible labor: The case of Chile's manufactured exports, 1973-1996 , Fernando Ignacio Leiva

An econometric study of the export sector of Somalia , Mohamed A Osman

Financial liberalization, multinational banks and investment: Three essays on the cases of Hungary and Poland , Christian Erik Weller

Dissertations from 1997 1997

Structuralism and individualism in economic analysis: The "contractionary devaluation debate" in development economics , S Charusheela

Financial liberalization in Mexico, 1989-1993 , Colin Danby

CEO pay, agency, and the theory of the firm , Frederick Dexter Guy

Food quality regulation under trade agreements: Effects on the supply of food safety and competitiveness , Neal Hilton Hooker

Agency problems in the capital markets and the employment relationship: The possibility of efficiency-enhancing institutional innovation: An empirical case-study , Pierre Laliberte

New directions in the political economy of consumption , Allan Henry MacNeill

Capabilities and processes of industrial growth: The case of Argentina and the Argentine auto industry , Marcela Monica Miozzo

Manufacturers' responses to new nutrition labeling regulations , Eliza Maria Mojduszka

Rethinking rural development: Making peasant organizations work. The case of Paraguay , Jose R Molinas Vega

Property regimes, technology, and environmental degradation in Cuban agriculture , Hector R Saez

International multi-sector, multi-instrument financial modeling and computation: Statics and dynamics , Stavros Siokos

Three essays on government decision-making to implement and enforce environmental policies , Kristin Ellen Skrabis

Dissertations from 1996 1996

An economic critique of urban planning and the 'postmodern' city: Los Angeles , Enid Arvidson

Dissertations from 1995 1995

Trade liberalization and income distribution: Three essays with reference to the case of Mexico and the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) , Mehrene E Larudee

Dissertations from 1994 1994

Subjectivism and the limits of F. A. Hayek's political economy , Theodore A Burczak

International currencies and endogenous enforcement , Roohi Prem

Three essays on key currencies and currency blocs , Ellen Tierney

Dissertations from 1993 1993

Capitalist regulation and unequal integration: The case of Puerto Rico , Jaime Eduardo Benson

Production and reproduction: Family policy and gender inequality in East and West Germany , Lynn Susan Duggan

Dissertations from 1992 1992

Capital controls and long-term economic growth , Jessica G Nembhard

Dissertations from 1990 1990

Concentration and product diversity in culture-based industries: A case study of the music recording industry , Peter James Alexander

Dissertations from 1987 1987

THE DETERMINANTS OF THE ECONOMIC POLICIES OF STATES IN THE THIRD WORLD: THE AGRARIAN POLICIES OF THE ETHIOPIAN STATE, 1941-1974 , HENOCK KIFLE

Dissertations from 1986 1986

The Political-Economy of Nuclear Power 1946-1982 , Steven Mark Cohn, Economics

Dissertations from 1985 1985

THE IMPACT OF PUBLIC SECTOR EMPLOYMENT ON RACIAL INEQUALITY: 1950 TO 1984 (BLACK, AFFIRMATIVE ACTION, GOVERNMENT, UNEMPLOYMENT, LABOR) , PETER GEORGE BOHMER

THE GROWTH OF NONMARRIAGE AMONG U.S. WOMEN, 1954-1983 (MARRIAGE, FAMILY, HOUSEHOLDS, UNITED STATES) , ELAINE DENISE MCCRATE

Dissertations from 1983 1983

TAXATION AND PUBLIC SCHOOL FINANCE REFORM IN CONNECTICUT , MICHAEL ROBERT FEDEROW

Dissertations from 1982 1982

Evolution of a Hospital Labor System: Technology, Coercion, and Conflict , Jean E. Fisher, Economics

Dissertations from 1981 1981

THE DEVELOPMENT OF THE MARKET ECONOMY IN COLONIAL MASSACHUSETTS , RONA STEPHANIE WEISS

Dissertations from 1980 1980

Justice and economic theory. , Barry Stewart Clark, Economics

Dissertations from 1976 1976

EVALUATION OF NEOCLASSICAL THEORY OF PRICE, PRODUCTION AND THE DISTRIBUTION OF INCOME. , MANUCHER DARESHURI

Dissertations from 1970 1970

COST PROBLEMS OF THE RUTLAND RAILROAD AND ITS SUCCESSORS FROM--1937 TO 1968 , ROBERT DAVID SMITH

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Topics for master's theses

Topics for master's theses.

The Department of Economics would like to present the following ideas for topics:

• Department of Economics
• MSC in Economics and Business Administration
• Master's thesis
• Apply for master's thesis supervisor

Behavioural Economics

Do you feel lucky, punk.

Background:

High-achieving persons often attribute part of their success to luck – that is, exogenous events outside their own control. Random events have been shown to play a decisive role in shaping people’s life trajectories. However, people may also differ in what they infer from the same objective outcome, which could have repercussions for their long-term financial success. In this master thesis, students will get the chance to conduct an economic experiment to shed light out on why some people feel lucky: is it because they are overly optimistic about the frequency of lucky events, or because they neglect unlucky events? The thesis will then explore how these personal traits correlate with basic economic preferences, personal characteristics, and real investment behavior.

Key references: 

Kaufman (2018), “The Role of Luck in Life Success Is Far Greater Than We Realized”, Scientific American

Profile: ECN, ECO, BUS, FIN, STR

Supervisor: Mathias Ekström

Paying with money or paying with personal data

During the last years concerns have been raised regarding the business model of several tech companies, which base their revenues on advertisements from third parties in exchange of customers’ personal data. From a consumers’ perspective, an important question behind this growing debate is how to quantify a price on personal data. Do consumers attach the same value to their personal data as they do to money? Is it even possible to put a price on your personal data? Previous literature has found a mismatch between willingness to pay (WTP) and willingness to accept (WTA) the sharing of personal information, but understanding behind this gap has not been fully explored. This master thesis project should conduct experiments to study a trade-off between paying with money and paying with personal data. In particular, it should explore potential explanations that could explain the mismatch between WTP and WTA of privacy.

Key references:

Acquisti, Alessandro, Leslie K. John, and George Loewenstein (2013). “What is privacy worth?.” The Journal of Legal Studies 42.2, 249-274.

Winegar, A. G. and C. R. Sunstein (2019). “How much is data privacy worth? A preliminary investigation.” Journal of Consumer Policy 42(3), 425–440.

Brynjolfsson, E. and Collis, A. (2019). “How Should We Measure the Digital Economy?”

Harvard Business Review, 97(6): 140-48. doi: 10.1257/aer.20170491

Collect your own data either by conducting an experiment on the online labor market Amazon Mechanical Turk or by doing a survey experiment.

Supervisors: Researchers from FAIR and Telenor Research.

UNDERSTANDING PATERNALISM

The extent to which it is acceptable to restrict the freedom of individuals in order to promote their own best interest is at the core of much political debate about the relationship between the state and its citizens: Should the state institute mandatory retirement savings, require motorcyclists to wear helmets or refuse to enforce certain types of contracts? Questions about the legitimate role of paternalism are also important in many interpersonal relationships, in particular between parents and their children, and people’s views on these matters may be of great importance for understanding their willingness to accept inequality in society. The master thesis project should conduct experiments to study a person’s willingness to reduce another individual’s freedom in order to promote that individual’s best interests. For example by studying how the willingness to act paternalistically depends on the characteristics of the individuals whose freedom is being restricted, such as how well informed they are, their competence, and their age.

Julian Le Grand & Bill New (2015): Government Paternalism: Nanny State or Helpful Friend? Princeton University Press, 2015

Suitable for profiles:   ECO, ECN, STR, INB, ENE

Supervisor: Alexander W. Cappelen

THE DEVELOPMENT OF SOCIAL PREFERENCES: EXPERIMENTAL EVIDENCE FROM INTERNATIONAL PILOTS

We are seeking master students who would like to write their master thesis as part of a project on the development of fairness preferences. The project is a collaboration between FAIR professors Alexander W. Cappelen and Bertil Tungodden.

We have recruited children from kindergartens and schools in Bergen to take part in a lab experiment we are implementing in September 2018. We have also collected comparable data for adults from Norway and Shanghai as well as for children from kindergartens and schools in Shanghai.

Almås, Cappelen, Sørensen and Tungodden (2010): “Fairness and the Development of Inequality Acceptance”, Science 328(5982): 1176–1178. (2) Almås, Cappelen, Salvanes, Sørensen and Tungodden (2017): “Fairness and family background”, Philosophy, Politics and Economics 16(2) 117-131. (3) Cappelen, List, Samek and Tungodden (2016): “The Effect of Early Education on Social Preferences”, NBER Working Paper No. 22898.

Suitable for:

NHH master students who are interested in helping to implement pilot experiments internationally during the fall and in writing their master thesis as part of the project are welcome to send an e-mail to Adriana Condarco-Quesada. It should include your name, your CV and a short note on why you would like to write your master thesis on this subject. Please also send any questions you might have regarding the project to Adriana.

Supervisor:   Bertil Tungodden

The role of the telco industry towards screen addiction

In the context of conducting fair business practices, a relevant question in the telecommunication industry is whether telco companies should allow and push for unlimited internet data usage. The particular issue at stake is whether providing unlimited data package would push consumers into increasing their social media use and their phone in general, and consequently increasing screen addiction. Telco companies obviously gain by costumers using more their phones. However, this issue raises ethical considerations regarding overdose and potential addiction consequences, which may eventually backfire on the companies’ long term profitability. The master thesis project should conduct experiments or surveys to gather information about people’s perspective on the role of telco companies towards screen use. In particular, it should focus on understanding the view on companies’ interventions when the consumer lacks the will power and/or intrinsic motivation to reduce his/her data consumption.

Alter, A. (2017). “Irresistible: The rise of addictive technology and the business of keeping us hooked”. Penguin.

Supervisors:  Researchers from  FAIR and Telenor Research.

WHAT DRIVES CONSUMERS TO CHANGE ELECTRICITY PROVIDER?

In markets characterized by subscription services, such as electricity, banking and telecommunications, we often find that consumers change providers or plans to a very low extent despite considerable price differences between seemingly similar (or even homogenous) products. There are many potential explanations for this phenomenon, e.g., lack of information, costs of switching, and strong preferences for particular providers. Understanding the sources of passive consumer behavior is important for both regulation, business planning, government policy and market design. We find clear signs of consumer passivity also in the Norwegian electricity retail market, and data sources available to this supervisor can allow a talented student to shed light on some of the potential channels.

von der Fehr and Hansen (2010): "Electricity Retailing in Norway", The Energy Journal 31: 25-45 (Basic reference); Hortacsu et al (2015): "Power to Choose? An Analysis of Consumer Inertia in the Residential Electricity Market", NBER Working Paper No. 20988 (Advanced reference)

Data:  Monthly data on number of subscriptions and sales (kWh) for the largest retailers within local areas will be provided by the supervisor, as well as weekly contract prices and monthly visitor statistics for the contract comparison website of the Competition Authority. Wholesale electricity prices and other useful market statistics can be gathered from Nordpool.

Suitable for profiles:  ECO, ECN, ENE, BUS, FIE, INB

Supervisor:   Morten Sæthre

Energy efficiency and electricity consumption: Drivers of green technology adoption

(Note: Theses under this topic can be eligible for an  Equinor scholarship for master theses .)

Description:

Assessments of potential savings from energy efficiency investments have suggested the existence of an "Energy Efficiency Gap"; that consumers do not undertake energy efficiency investments with even large positive returns. Though the conclusion has been hotly debated in the academic literature, we still lack a solid understanding of drivers and barriers to energy efficiency adoption, which is necessary for designing appropriate policies. Currently, most countries employ some combination of regulation and subsidies to increase energy efficiency, e.g., 100-300 mNOK in yearly Enova subsidies for households in Norway.

Under this topic, you will contribute to our understanding of green technology adoption under the supervision of one or more experienced researchers with competences targeted to different approaches and research questions. Examples of specific projects are "Inattention and green technology: Do temporary shocks to electricity prices spur adoption?", "Does increased electricity demand lead to energy efficiency investment: Evidence from electric vehicle take-up", and "Are green technology subsidies regressive?", "Constrained wallets or constrained minds: The role of mental budgeting and relative thinking in green technology investment", or "Green loans vs investment subsidies: The optimal mix". The examples are far from an exhaustive list, and we encourage you to contact us if you could see yourself writing your master thesis within this topic and want to learn more.

Hunt Allcott and Michael Greenstone (2012) "Is There an Energy Efficiency Gap", Journal of Economic Perspectives 26, pp. 3-28

Hunt Allcott (2016) "Paternalism and Energy Efficiency: An Overview", Annual Review of Economics 8, pp. 145-176

Anna Sahari (2019) "Electricity prices and consumers' long-term technology choices: Evidence from heating investments", European Economic Review 114, pp. 19-53

Electricity prices and consumption data from Nordpool and Statistics Norway, Enova subsidies, statistics on sales of efficient heating systems. It might be possible to gain access to household data given availability and project needs.

Suitable for profiles:  BUS, ECN, ECO, ENE, FIN

(Tentative) supervisor:  Samuel D. Hirshman , Harim Kim,  Eirik G. Kristiansen ,  Mateusz Mysliwski  and/or  Morten Sæthre

Development Economics

Bulk buying and poverty.

Buying in bulk is a common way that consumers use to obtain lower prices on their purchases. There is now some evidence that low income consumers are not exploiting this strategy well, despite the large potential gains. The thesis will review the issue, and use an innovative detailed dataset from India to investigate it in a new setting.

Key References:

Brian Dillon, Joachim De Weerdt, Ted O’Donoghue, Paying More for Less: Why Don’t Households in Tanzania Take Advantage of Bulk Discounts?, The World Bank Economic Review , Volume 35, Issue 1, February 2021, Pages 148–179.

Suitable for profiles:  ECN, ECO

Supervisor:  Vincent Somville

High Frequency Poverty

Poverty is typically measured at annual level. High frequency data reveals that potentially many households cross the poverty line for significant periods even if they are not poor on average on an annual basis. The thesis will investigate transitory poverty using weekly financial diaries from India.

Jonathan Morduch. Rethinking Poverty, Household Finance, and Microfinance. Forthcoming in Handbook of Microfinance, Financial Inclusion, and Development, edited by Robert Cull and Valentina Hartarska. Forthcoming.

Supervisor: Bertil Tungodden

What effect daugthers have, globally?

There is some evidence from western countries that fathering daughters changes men’s attitudes towards women in general, and can also affect the household structure.

The students will use a global data base covering dozens of countries to investigate the global effects of daughters, and how they affect the economics of families.

Washington, Ebonya L. 2008. "Female Socialization: How Daughters Affect Their Legislator Fathers." American Economic Review , 98 (1): 311-32 .

Jan Kabátek, David C Ribar, Daughters and Divorce, The Economic Journal , Volume 131, Issue 637, July 2021, Pages 2144–2170.

Economic History

Bergen as a maritime capital.

The Norwegian consultancy group Menon publishes an annual list of “The leading maritime capitals of the world”. Bergen is not included in the list of 15 cities evaluated in the report, but has been included in a longlist of 30 nominated cities that are benchmarked according to a set of 24 indicators. The aim of the thesis would be to analyze a) the basis for the ranking; and b) measures that would make Bergen a leading maritime capital.

Key literature: Menon report

Data: developed together with the supervisor

Suitable for profiles: STR, INB, BUS

Supervisor: Stig Tenold

BERGEN AS A MARITIME SERVICE PROVIDER

Bergen plays a key role as one of the leading maritime cities internationally. Bergen shipping companies have dominant positions in several markets (chemical tanker transport, open hatch bulk shipping), and there are also world-class companies in auxiliary services (in particular ship finance, insurance, ship registry). Combining historical perspectives and economic theory, the aim of the thesis would be to analyze to which extent the success of these auxiliary services is based on linkages to the local industry, and to which extent it is a result of the international orientation of the service providers themselves.

Data: Veritas, surveys developed together with the supervisor

Innovation and the patent system

Intellectual property rights are usually associated with the patent system – patents and patent laws. The relationship between patents and innovations has been studied extensively, for example how patent laws create incentives to invent, promote innovation and encourage economic growth. Historical or modern data analysis do, however, give no clear answers, and there is a potential for research that addresses several questions: Does the existence of strong patent laws encourage innovation?  What proportion of innovations is patented? Is this share constant across industries? How does patenting and licensing affect the diffusion of knowledge? Such questions have only to a limited extent been studied in a Norwegian context.

Key reference:

P. Moser, ‘Patents and Innovation: Evidence from Economic History’, Journal of Economic Perspectives, Vol. 27 (1), 2013.

Patent and innovation statistics from the Norwegian Research Council (NFR) and Patentstyret. Norwegian policy documents, company annual reports.

Suitable for profiles: ECO, ECN, STR, INB, BUS

Supervisor: Bjørn L. Basberg

The gender wage gap

How large is the gender wage gap and why do we observe a gender wage gap. These are important questions that occupy economists, business operations and politicians. Students can address this question empirically by documenting the gender wage gap with international data (e.g. OECD, Eurostat, ILO) or national data sets. An interesting focus is to look at young adults or young adults in the NEET (not in education and employment) group.  It could be interesting to compare the measure across data sources and discuss differences and explanations.

There is also a new data source made available for research for young adults in developing countries which could be explored in this thesis (see Bandiera et al. (2022). Other macro-data sources that could be explored and compared across countries, demographic groups and time are found on the webpages of the OECD, Eurostat and ILO. Students could also use historical data for a thesis on this topic.

Key References: 

Bandiera, Oriana, Ahmed Elsayed, Andrea Smurra, and Céline Zipfel. 2022. "Young Adults and Labor Markets in Africa."  Journal of Economic Perspectives , 36 (1): 81-100.

Kunze, A. (2018). The gender wage gap in developed countries.  The Oxford handbook of women and the economy , 369-394.

Fields: economics, labour markets, developing countries, developed countries, empirical, econometrics

Profile: ECON

Supervisor: Astrid Kunze

Environmental & Resource Economics

Climate change in the arctic and economic activities.

The climate change is evident in the Arctic in the way of increased temperatures, decreasing ice and consequently increased accessibility. Maritime transport, fisheries and resource exploitation (mineral oil in particular) are industries that already are pushing the frontiers further north. Since the Arctic Ocean is surrounded by several national states (Canada, the United States, Russia, Norway and Denmark / Greenland), the political tension in the region has increased in a classic ‘race for property rights’ that has historic parallels. Other non-Arctic nations, China in particular, shows increased interest in the region.

There are many potential issues and questions that could be analyzed in an economic framework. What have been the recent trends, and how do businesses and stakeholders view the future? How does the government-business interaction play out in different countries involved? The climate change involves changes in both costs and benefits. How could this be modelled and analyzed?

A.S. Crépin et.al., ‘Arctic Climate Change, Economy and Society (ACCESS): Integrated Perspectives’, Ambio, Dec. (46) 2017, 341-354 and G. Eskeland and L.S. Flottorp, ‘Climate Change in the Arctic: A Discussion of the Impact on Economic Activity’, in Glomsrød et.al. (eds.), The Economy of the North, SSB, 2006.

Data: Climate change reports, government papers and statistics, business prospects.

Suitable for profiles: ECN, STR, INB, BUS.

COMMERCIAL ACTIVITIES IN THE ANTARCTIC REGION

The Antarctic region has a long history of resource exploitation (sealing, whaling). Today, human activity in the region is dominated by science, but there are also industries like fisheries, tourism and bio-prospecting. Such industries have to a small extent been analyzed in an economic context and several questions are interesting to pursue. What is the economic scale of these operations? What is the economic and financial importance for the companies involved? Are management and regulatory systems sufficient?

B.L. Basberg, ‘Perspectives on the Economic History of the Antarctic Region’, International Journal of Maritime History, VO. XVIII (2), 2006,

Data: Economics and business statistics on tourism from the International Association of Antarctic Tour Operators (IAATO) and on fisheries from the Convention on the Conservation of Antarctic Marine Living Resources (CCAMLR).

ECONOMIC PERSPECTIVES ON TOURISM IN THE POLAR REGIONS

Polar tourism, especially ship born cruise tourism both in the Arctic and in the Antarctic has increased for many years. Business prospects and plans seem to indicate that this will continue.

There are, however, serious challenges ahead. The climate change involves increased accessibility, but also alters the unique experience that constitutes the rationale for the industry. Concerns about long travels is also a factor that creates uncertainties about future demand for such travels.

Several questions could be analyzed about this industry in an economic context. Is it possible, within a traditional business model, to create an environmental and social sustainable industry? There seems to be large future uncertainties connected both to the supply and the demand side in this market. How could that be modelled and analyzed?

M. Lamers and B. Amelung, ‘Climate Change and its Impact for Cruise Tourism’ in M. Lück et. al. (eds), Cruise Tourism in Polar Regions. Promoting Environmental and Social Sustainability? London 2010, p. 147-165.

Data:  Climate change reports, statistics and reports from the International Association of Antarctic Tour Operators (IAATO), tour operator plans and annual reports.

Suitable for profiles: ECN, STR, INB, BUS

Reflections of climate change: suffering and regret

With increasing consumption and production of many goods and services, the humanmade effects on climate change are getting bigger and bigger. For some activities the potential effects are well-known, such as plastic taking at least 400 years to dissolve completely in the nature. For some other activities the effects can be ambiguous and unknown to the consumers, such as the impact of an e-mail box size on the environment. When there is ambiguity about the consequences of their actions, people may suffer from both the direct effects of climate change and the regret from contributing this. The master thesis project should investigate regret and regret aversion when making decisions have potential consequences for the climate. Treatment variation could be driven by using manipulated regret lotteries for consumption (or digital) decisions.

Imas, A., Lam´e, D., Wilson, A. J. (2020). Reversals between one-shot and repeated decisions in incentive design: the case of regret. Mimeo

Robinson, P. J., Botzen, W. J. (2018). The impact of regret and worry on the threshold level of concern for flood insurance demand: Evidence from Dutch homeowners. Judgment and Decision Making , 13(3), 237-245.

Volpp, K. G., John, L. K., Troxel, A. B., Norton, L., Fassbender, J., Loewenstein, G.

(2008). Financial incentive–based approaches for weight loss: a randomized trial. Jama , 300(22), 2631-2637.

Zeelenberg, M., Pieters, R. (2007). A theory of regret regulation 1.0. Journal of Consumer Psychology , 17(1), 3-18.

Collect your own data either through a survey experiment or by conducting an online experiment on a crowdsourcing platform.

Firms & Ethics

Diversity in firms, top leadership, financial and technology sector.

Societies and firms increasingly become diverse in terms of gender, sexual orientation, ethnic background, language background, age. Gender imbalances are particularly pronounced when we look at top leadership, but also sectors such as the financial and technology sector. But the goal of firms of increasing diversity is not restricted to gender balance, but also other demographic characteristics such as age, ethnic background etc.

Equality is high on the political agenda and more and more firms acknowledge that in order to recruit the best workers they need to make diversity and inclusive worklife part of their strategic goals. Firms increasingly integrate gender equality and business ethics as part of their corporate management strategy.

A masterthesis in this area can be an empirical thesis where students assemble or collect novel data that allow to measure diversity in firms and policies that firms design to increase diversity. Students could measure corporate social responsibility along various dimensions and investigate whether such policies do lead to improved firm performance. Students could also study in their thesis more conceptually why firms care about diversity.

Depending on the study profile of the student this thesis can focus on financial outcomes, socio-economic outcomes, careers or theory and empirical methods.

SNF database merged with other data (for Norway)

Orbis database (for international study)

Suitable for profiles: ECON, STR, BUS, FIN

Do business organisations in Europe use diversity and inclusive worklife policies?

I am looking for master's students who collect data from business organisations in Europe, a sample or as many as possible,  to measure whether business organisations D&I policies (e.g. a webpage) and what policies they have. This thesis can take different forms depending on the interests and skills of the students. The thesis could take a focus on the discussion what D&I are, how to categorize those and then how to measure the outcomes of interest. The collection of the data demands a plan how to collect these data (manually from webpages, scaping, or other methods). The thesis may have the design of the data collection as the main part, hand-collection of data or developing an algorithm. Students may also use the plan if there is time to collect a small sample. The most ambitious plan is to collect a large sample that may be merged with other data. If the latter part is the main part, the literature overview of D&I and the more conceptual discussion may be shorter. Instead there could be some empirical descriptive analysis part of the thesis. This thesis leaves a lot of space for the students to find their own focus matching with their interests.

References:

Hospido, L., Laeven, L., & Lamo, A. (2019). The gender promotion gap: evidence from central banking.  The Review of Economics and Statistics , 1-45.

Kalev, A., Dobbin, F., & Kelly, E. (2006). Best practices or best guesses? Assessing the efficacy of corporate affirmative action and diversity policies.  American sociological review ,  71 (4), 589-617.

Fields: organisations, labour markets, equality, diversity in firms, empirical

Profiles: ECON, STR, FOR

Do universities in Europe have diversity and inclusive worklife policies

I am looking for master's students who collect data from universities in Europe, a sample or as many as possible,  to measure whether universities and economic faculties in Europe have D&I policies (e.g. a webpage) and what policies they have. This thesis can take different forms depending on the interests and skills of the students. The thesis could take a focus on the discussion what D&I are, how to categorize those and then how to measure the outcomes of interest. The collection of the data demands a plan how to collect these data (manually from webpages, scaping, or other methods). The thesis may have the design of the data collection as the main part. Students may also use the plan if there is time to collect a small sample. The most ambitious plan is to collect a large sample  that may be merged with other data on representation of women among Professors in Economics. If the latter part is the main part, the literature overview of D&I and the more conceptual discussion may be shorter. Students could collect data on universities overall, or focus on departments of Economics, or Engineering or other fields. This thesis leaves a lot of space for the students to find their own focus matching with their interests.

Auriol, E., Friebel, G., Weinberger, A., & Wilhelm, S. (2022). Underrepresentation of women in the economics profession more pronounced in the United States compared to heterogeneous Europe.  Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences ,  119 (16), e2118853119.

Profiles : ECON, STR, FOR

Supervisor : Astrid Kunze

Firm behaviour, recruitment and personnel policies

I am looking for masterstudents who are interested to work together with a firm and evaluate certain firm policies and personnel data. The thesis may require designing a survey, preparing confidential data, analysing data collected by the firm. Topics may be on performance evaluation, recruitment, careers, firm performance, accounting. The students could also come with their own ideas.

If students have interest or an idea please get in touch early in the process of planning the masterthesis.

Data: They will be prepared together with the supervisor.

Suitable for profiles:  ECON, BUS, ECN, FIN, STR

Supervisor:   Astrid Kunze

Who should get internet?

Background: 

Access to broadband internet has been found to increase employment and wages, labour productivity, financial technology and banking, education, among other things. A question that still needs to be answered is how to evaluate the expansion of broadband internet in developed countries, where penetration rates are already very high. For example, in Norway 11% of the population does still not have access to internet broadband. A recent public debate has raised the issue on whether the Norwegian government should step in and extend the coverage to the entire population. The master thesis project should investigate people’s perspectives on broadband expansion in Norway. It should, for example, elicit the willingness to pay for (fast) broadband and evaluate different scenarios in a cost and benefit analysis of a potential public investment. Moreover, based on previous evidence that connectivity can enable higher economic productivity, the project could explore whether resources for the broadband expansion should be allocated to all the uncovered areas or whether they should only focus on the most productive areas with more growth potential.

Akerman, Anders, Ingvil Gaarder, and Magne Mogstad (2015). ”The skill complementarity of broadband internet.” The Quarterly Journal of Economics 130.4 : 1781-1824.

M. Bhuller, T. Havnes, E. Leuven and M. Mogstad (2013). “Broadband Internet: An Information Superhighway to Sex Crime?” Review of Economic Studies , 80, 1237-1266.

International Trade & Globalization

How are global value chains affected by the pandemic and recent geopolitical events.

An important aspect of the trends towards more globalisation since the turn of the century, has been the increasing importance of ever more complex (global) supply chains in many industries. The unprecedented technological development in information and communication technology (ICT), combined with more integrated markets and reduced transportation and transaction costs, have made it both technically feasible and economically profitable to split the production process and produce parts and components in various parts of the world. This is often called global value chains (GVC).

From the beginning of the corona pandemic, spring 2020, it became clear that many of these supply chains are very vulnerable to market disruptions, be it in production in various regions or in transportation and international infrastructure. Supply shortages and long delivery times for key components and products have had a significant negative impact on firms and industries in all parts of the world, and many firms have had to reconsider their global value chains.

The present geopolitical situation adds to the pressure on supply chains and exposes the vulnerability of relying on certain sources of raw material and key parts and components in various industries.

Possible approaches:

Given the general picture above, several master thesis topics are possible, depending on the interests of the students. Here are some suggestions:

• Choose an industry (or a firm) and study how the global supply chains in that industry developed before the pandemic and how they have changed recently.  Assess how the pandemic and the geopolitical situation have affected the situation and what the future development might be.
• Choose several industries and compare their development over time both before and during the pandemic.  
• There could also be room for a more theoretical thesis, perhaps with examples from various industries, in which the basis for growing GVC-trade over a long period is analysed, followed by a discussion of why and how the recent events have had such a negative impact in GVCs, and what the future development may be. 

Possible majors:   ECN, ECO, BUS, STR (depending on the focus of the thesis)

Possible supervisors:   Linda Orvedal , Jan I. Haaland or other faculty members from the Department of Economics

How will BREXIT and the new trade agreements affect Norway and Norwegian industry?

The UK decision to leave the EU (BREXIT) will have implications not only for the UK and the EU, but also for other countries.  After a long period of debate and negotiations, the UK and the EU agreed on the new “Trade and Cooperation Agreement” on the 24 th December 2020.  The agreement has been in place since 1 st January 2021, although parts of it is still debated.  In June 2021 Norway, together with the other EEA countries (Iceland and Liechtenstein), agreed on a free-trade agreement with the UK.

Both the Trade and Cooperation Agreement between the UK and the EU and the new free-trade agreement between the UK and the EEA countries will have profound implications for trade between the UK and Norway, for many reasons.  First, the UK is an important trading partner for Norway, for goods and services, as well as when it comes to investments and mobility of labour.  All of this have been affected by Brexit, even if new agreements are in place. Secondly, through the European Economic Area (EEA) Norway is part of the EU single market, but not part of the EU Customs Union. Hence, the UK’s departure from the EU customs union will have implications for Norway’s trade both with the EU and the UK.  And thirdly, Brexit has initiated a new discussion about the EEA (EØS) agreement in Norway; hence the implications may be even more serious. 

Approach:  

There could be many interesting ways of approaching the question of how BREXIT may affect Norway and Norwegian industry. One approach could be to take a general national view and discuss possible implications of BREXIT and the new trade agreements for overall trade and economic interactions between the UK and Norway. Another approach could be to select a particular industry and study the possible implications for that industry. And a third option could be to focus on the implications of a possible future change in the trade relations between the EU and Norway. All three approaches would need a good combination of theoretical understanding of trade agreements and possible future trade regimes, and empirical observations and analysis of the actual trade relations between the two countries.

Standard international economics textbooks for the understanding of trade policies and trade agreements.  www.wto.org for more specific information about the multilateral trade system and regional trade agreements. For BREXIT the literature is evolving constantly.  A good source is UK Trade Policy Observatory ( https://blogs.sussex.ac.uk/uktpo/ ) with many blogs and reports on recent developments.  When it comes to the new trade agreement between Norway and the UK, there are so far few independent analyses of possible consequences, but official information about the agreement is given on the governments’ webpages: Norwegian Government: https://www.regjeringen.no/no/aktuelt/inngar-historisk-frihandelsavtale-med-storbritannia/id2857147/   UK Government’s: https://www.gov.uk/government/news/united-kingdom-signs-free-trade-deal-with-norway-iceland-and-liechtenstein

Data: Industrial characteristics and trade data.

Possible majors: ECN, INB

Possible supervisors: Jan I. Haaland and Linda Orvedal

Sustainability and global value chains

The UN Sustainable Development Goals (SDG) cover a number of areas of great importance for both national and multinational companies, and many companies use the SDGs both in their strategies and in marketing as something they will contribute to.  Areas like decent work and economic growth (SDG8), industry, innovation and infrastructure (SDG9), responsible consumption and production (SDG12), climate action (SDG13) all have direct links to companies, but the same is true for most of the SDGs. For some key areas, like human rights and labour conditions, there are also more specific international agreements and rules that companies are obliged to adhere to.

A key feature of international business today, is the reliance on global value chains (GVC for short, also called global supply chains), where the final products are made up of parts and components produced by a number of suppliers and sub-suppliers in different parts of the world.  Some of these GVCs are very complex, and it is not easy for the companies to keep track of the whole supply chain.  Yet, the companies’ responsibility to adhere to national and international rules, as well as their commitment to contribute to the SDGs, cover not only their own parts of the production process, but the whole supply chain.

How do multinationals go about to keep track of their GVC and to ensure that their obligations and commitments to e.g. human rights, labour conditions and/or environment issues are fulfilled throughout the supply chain?

There could be several approaches to this research question, depending on the students’ interest.  One possibility is to choose an industry or a firm and try to map the situation for that industry/firm.   Another possibility could be to start out with international rules and regulations in one or a few areas (e.g. human rights, or climate emissions) and to study how various industries relate to the regulations and how this affects their global value chains.   

Possible majors:   ECN, ENE, BUS, STR (depending on approach)

The war in Ukraine – implications for key markets in Europe and globally

The Russian invasion of Ukraine in February 2022 has affected the European and world economy in many ways. Energy and food markets have been disrupted with huge implications for both Europe and the rest of the world, but other markets have also seen significant changes due to the war. The market implications follow directly from the fact that the war prevents Ukraine from producing and exporting many products, as well as from the economic sanctions towards Russia and the Russian reactions.  Although the immediate and short-term effects have been huge, it is still too early to say what the longer-term effects may be.

Two possible approaches: 

• Choose an industry/product, study how the war has affected the international markets for that industry so far, and try to assess how the future development may be.
• Look at the broader picture and assess how various international markets have been affected and what the future development may by. 

Possible majors:   ECN, ECO, ENE (depending on approach)

Labour Economics

Do flexible pay schemes explain the rise of wage inequality.

In most developed countries, wage inequality has increased in the last decades. A popular explanation is that it is increasingly common to have pay set at the worker rather than at the sectoral level. This leaves more room for wage negotiations, potentially driving labor market inequality. This master thesis aims to assess the role of flexible pay setting in developing wage inequality using unique data on workers’ pay components (e.g., overtime, bonuses). You will have access to microdata for 25 European countries (SES data) to implement your analysis. 

Lemieux, Thomas, MacLeod, W Bentley and Parent, Daniel. 2009. "Performance Pay and Wage Inequality" The Quarterly Journal of Economics , 124 (1): 1-49.

Profile:  ECON

Supervisor: Antoine Bertheau

GENDER DIFFERENCES IN LABOUR MARKETS

Despite the fact that great gender convergence in employment is observed in labour markets, large gender differences remain. Women earn 16 per cent on average less in terms of hourly wages than men in the EU. Women also work in very different occupation and industries than men. True, if we compare men and women in the same job and in the same firm, we find very small wage differences; however, very few men and women work in the same job in the same firm. There are many more differences in labour markets between men and women which invites to important research questions suitable for a masterthesis. You could look for questions related to graduates in economics and business administration (use data from NHH. e.g.). You could study questions at the national level for Norway or another country, or internationally. International evidence is very important to learn and valuable to your career if you work, for example, in a company that does trade with EU and the world. Germany is a country important to learn about, since it is one of the main trading partners of Norway, followed by the UK etc.

•   SIAB (German register data, employer-employee matched panel, 1975-2015

•   SOEP (Socio Economic Panel for Germany, 1984-2016)

• Mikrodata.no at NSD provides access to the Norwegian register data

•    NHH annual graduate survey

Suitable for profiles:  ECN, FIN, STR

HOW DID THE INTERNET CHANGE THE CHANNELS OF JOB SEARCH?

People that search for a job have several options to find it: read newspapers, go to employment agencies, browse the web and mobilize their local networks of friends and relatives. Networking has increasingly become important for job search. Social networks are an important source of information in the labor market and many workers find jobs through friends and relatives. On the other hand, an increasing number of people use the Internet to look for new jobs. One reason online job search has become so popular is that it has changed the search process considerably. Employment websites allow job seekers to access thousands of job offers and use intelligent filter mechanisms to find suitable vacancies.

Key references: Kuhn, P. J. and M. Skuterud (2004): “Internet Job Search and Unemployment Durations," The American Economic Review, 94, 218-232.

Data: Norwegian Labor Force Survey

Suitable for profiles:   ECO, ECN, STR, INB, BUS

Supervisor: Aline Bütikofer

Human capital, apprenticeship training, aspirations to success, early career, youth unemployment and youth labour markets

Some research has debunked the argument that job-hopping can propel a person onward and upward more rapidly than would be possible by staying in one place. In this thesis students can study and quantify mobility during the early career after first entry into the labaour market and after completion of education.  How do high achievers perform during the early career who eventually will fill top positions. Students could also analyse how women versus men’s early career looks like. Is it important to be mobile, or how long is it optimal to stay in the first job?

The thesis can focus more on firms and careers and strategic human capital or take a more labour economics and empirical methods direction.

See an example of a paper here:

Bonet, R., Cappeli, P.,  Hamori, M.  (2020). “Gender differences in speed of advancement: an empirical examination of top executives in the fortune 100 firms”.  Strategic Management Journal , Vol. 41 (4): 708-737

This project requires individual panel data on employment and wage histories.

•  SIAB (German register data, employer-employee matched panel, 1975-2015)

•  SOEP (Socio Economic Panel for Germany, 1984-2016)

•  Mikrodata.no at NSD provides access to the Norwegian register data

Suitable for profiles: ECON, BUS, ECN, FIN, STR

Labour markets, gender differences and family policy

Despite the fact that great gender convergence in employment is observed in labour markets, large gender differences remain. Women earn 16 per cent on average less in terms of hourly wages than men in the EU. Women also work in very different occupation and industries than men. True, if we compare men and women in the same job and in the same firm, we find very small wage differences; however, very few men and women work in the same job in the same firm. In addition, differentials build up over careers and these may not be reflected in cross-sectional differentials.

There is a great need for studies focusing on occupations, industries, and selected groups. Students could look for questions related to graduates in economics and business administration using data from NHH surveys.). Students could study questions on labour markets and policies fighting unfair differences at the national level for Norway or another country, or internationally (EIGE database).

International evidence on labour markets is very important to learn and valuable to your career if you work, for example, in a company that does trade with EU and the world. Labour is the main input factor to the firm. Germany is a country important to learn about, since it is one of the main trading partners of Norway, followed by the UK etc.

• EIGE database, ILO
• SIAB (German register data, employer-employee matched panel, 1975-2015
• SOEP (Socio Economic Panel for Germany, 1984-2016)
• NHH annual graduate survey

Macroeconomics

Assessing the norwegian macroeconomic policy framework.

The design of monetary and fiscal policy has moved towards a rule based framework, exemplified by the so-called Taylor rule or the “Handlingsreglene” governing the management of the oil fund in Norway. How does monetary and/or fiscal policy respond  to shocks affecting the Norwegian economy? Are the responses of macroeconomic policy stable over time. How did the economy and financial markets respond to the introduction of these rules?

Clarida, R., J. Gali and M. Gertler. (1999). The Science of Monetary Policy: A New Keynesian Perspective, Journal of Economic Literature 37(4): 1661-1707. J. Taylor (2000). Reassessing Discretionary Fiscal Policy. Journal of Economic Perspectives 14(3): 21-36.

Suitable for profiles:   ECN, ECO, FIE

Supervisor: Gernot Doppelhofer

Business Cycles and Gender

Men and women work in different sectors, which are differently susceptible to business cycle fluctuations. In the US, the stereotype is that men work in the construction sector, which is highly business cycle sensitive, while women work in the education sector, in which hours worked do not fluctuate much over the business cycle. There are also differences in the aggregate behavior of hours worked in the group of people living in one-person households and those living in couple households. Are the same patterns true in Norway as well? What could the reason be for why / why not?

Albanesi, S. and A. Şahin (2018). The Gender Unemployment Gap. Review of Economic Dynamics 30, 47–67. Olsson, J. Singles, Couples, and Their Labor Supply: Long-run Trends and Short-run Fluctuations. Working paper.

Suitable for profiles:   ECN, ECO

Supervisor: Jonna Olsson

Economic growth and the input factor labor

How much does the input factor labor account for in the national product in Norway? A Norwegian minister once said in public: Women are more worth than oil in Norway. Is that true and how can we measure the contribution over time? In this thesis students can conceptionally think about a growth model and how to measure the contribution of labour to growth and the level of production in an economy. This could include a literature survey and an overview of estimates for different countries and time periods. Then they can take the model to Norwegian data or other data to estimate the contribution. For the empirical estimations the students could explore Norwegian register data accessible on microdata at NHH. This is a sketch of the idea and the students can develop their own ideas.

Fields: macro-economics, labour economics, empirical, econometrics

Profiles: ECON

Supervisors: Astrid Kunze

How Prevalent is Downward Rigidity in Nominal Wages in Norway?

Since Keynes, macroeconomists typically assume that wages are rigid, i.e., cannot be adjusted downward. However, the empirical evidence is still scant. In Norway, we now have good data to test this assumption empirically. The master thesis would aim to assess the degree of wage rigidity using rich Norwegian administrative datasets (on firms and their employees). 

Elsby, Michael W. L, Solon, Gary (2019) How Prevalent is Downward Rigidity in Nominal Wages? International Evidence from Payroll Records and Pay Slips, Journal of Economic Perspectives, 185-201.

Suitable for profiles: ECN

Is there a Beveridge curve in the Norwegian housing market?

Originally, the Beveridge curve measures the relationship between the number of vacant positions and the number of unemployed people in the labour market. It gives expression to the existence of search frictions in this market. But the housing market is also characterised by such frictions: it takes time for a buyer to find a suitable house and for a seller to get in touch with a buyer. 

This project would consist in (i) collecting monthly data about the number of buyers searching for a house, e.g., based on data about visits during house showings, (ii) collecting data about the number of houses for sale, and (iii) estimating the relationship between both variables during the business cycle. Focus can be on the housing market for one of the larger cities in Norway.

Genvose and Han (2012) Search and matching in the housing market. Journal of Urban Economics.

Gabrovski and Ortego-Marti (2019) The cyclical behavior of the Beveridge curve in the housing market.

Gabrovski and Ortego-Marti (2022) On the slope of the Beveridge curve in the housing market.

Data: Data from eiendomnorge.no, real estate agencies

Suitable for profiles: ECN, ECO, FIN, BAN

Supervisor: Fred Schroyen

NOWCASTING AND PREDICTING THE NORWEGIAN ECONOMY

A large number of indicators have been proposed to predict the current and future state of the economy. Many macroeconomic or financial data are being reported at different points in time and some are subject to revisions. The measurement of current and future economic conditions is essential for the conduct  of macroeconomic policy, dating of business cycles and household or financial decision making . What are important factors predicting current and future economic activity and financial variables, such as exchange rates, stock prices, …?

Stock, J. and M. Watson. (1999). Forecasting Inflation. Journal of Monetary Economics v44(2): 293-335

Price changes among manufacturing firms

To understand how prices are adjusted, and why, is very important, for both consumers, firm-owners and -managers, regulators and macro economists. The typical IO question; How does a firm set the price or quantity in relation to other market participants? Macro economists: Monetary policy has only a real effect if prices (and wages) are sticky (think of the IS-LM or AD-AS models). Price adjustment costs and their nature are central for industrial organization and the macro economy. What do we know empirically about the micro behaviour of firms? Do we see some patterns in firms’ price setting? Do we observe immediate responses to demand-, technology-, and cost-shocks?

Based on survey information from Statistics Norway about product prices in the manufacturing industry, merged with register data on firms’ revenues, costs, investments, and labour demand there are several topics for empirical master theses on pricing behaviour, either seen through the lenses of an IO scholar, or a macro economist.

Data: 

As the data include highly sensitive information, it is necessary to apply for access to the data.

Suitable for profiles:  ECN

Supervisor:  Prof. Øivind A. Nilsen

The price development on the real estate market in a non-Scandinavian country

In many European countries, the housing market is characterized by soaring prices.  Is this price evolution reflecting a development in the underlying fundamentals for this market, or are actual prices and fundamentals little connected, thereby possibly indicating a price bubble?  Using quarterly data on real estate prices, this project would estimate a model for the housing market allowing for both fundamentals and error-corrections mechanisms.

Bergman and Sørensen (2021) The interaction of actual and fundamental house prices: a general model with an application to Sweden, Journal of Housing Economics 54 .

Data:  Real estate price statistics, housing stock statistics, national account data

Suitable for profiles:  ECN, ECO,FIN.

Supervisor:  Fred Schroyen

Corporate sustainability, firm performance and economic growth

Firms, consumers, investors and stakeholders more generally are increasingly informing their decisions based on  environmental, social and governance (ESG) credentials. 

Policies are put in place fostering ESG reporting. Governments are implementing regulations requiring organisations to increase transparency in areas such as diversity, equal pay, carbon emissions and complying with responsible working conditions. On the 21st of April 2021, the EU commission announced the adoption of the Corporate Sustainability Reporting Directive (CSRD) in line with the commitment made under the European Green Deal. The proposed directive will also entail a dramatic increase in the number of companies subject to the EU sustainability reporting requirements across the EU countries.

The hypothesis or claim is that sustainable growth is the only way to build a successful business and have a lasting impact on our environment and society. More empirical research is needed in this area and this topic area offers opportunities for mastertheses in, for example,  macroeconomics, public economics, management, finance, and resource economics.

Examples of research questions for masterthesis:

Collect data on how many firms report on ESG and make reports publicly available in Norway or the EU. Here students can focus on one aspect or a subset.

What is the quality of ESG reporting and are firms pursuing the attempted goals? E.g. what is the quality of firms’ reports on gender equality and gender diversity consistent with national statistics? Students can collect their own data for a subset of Norwegian firms and compare these to Norwegian micro-statistics or indicators based on firm-level data.

Consultancies are providing guidance and software to help firms report on ESG. An interesting thesis could contain collecting data on these and organise an overview of the work of consultancies in this area, e.g. on equality and gender diversity or environment. This material could then be critically assessed comparing it to main indicators and challenges in terms of equality and D&I.

Students interested in macroeconomics could quantify the contribution of human capital to growth and discuss the expected chances coming from ESG reporting and the transition of the economy.

Data sources and methods:

• Firm level data collected by the students (could use hand collection, text analysis, scaping, or other methods)
• Firm level data: SNF database, BoardEx Data
• Regression analysis (programs STATA or R)
• OECD data, EIGE data (on equality, wages, education, job titles)

Gillan, S. L., Koch, A., & Starks, L. T. (2021). Firms and social responsibility: A review of ESG and CSR research in corporate finance.  Journal of Corporate Finance ,  66 , 101889.

Post, C., & Byron, K. (2015). Women on boards and firm financial performance: A meta-analysis.  Academy of management Journal ,  58 (5), 1546-1571.

Miller, A. R. (2018). Women and leadership in Averett, S., & Hoffman, S. D. (Eds.). (2018).  The Oxford handbook of women and the economy . Oxford University Press.

Kunze, A. (2020): Kjønnsmessig mangfold i ledelsen" (Gender diversity in top management), Magma, No. 320, Årgang 23, 3/2020.

Fields: macroeconomics, public economics, management, finance, and resource economics

If you are interested please get in touch with Prof. Astrid Kunze, Assoc. Prof. Krisztina Molnar, or Antoine Bertheau

Microeconomics & Industrial Organization

Competition and pricing in the european airline industry.

The airline industry is comprised of large, capital-intensive firms competing on prices, availability and prices, making decisions over prices, routes to operate and fleet. Important features of competition is price discrimination, use of loyalty programs and entry in or exit from specific routes, in the face of potentially tough competition and volatile demand over the business cycle. The European and Norwegian airline industry has changed dramatically over the years, with changing technologies, travel habits, regulations, taxation and industry structure. The rise of low-cost carriers from the late 90s and early 2000s and the strategic responses of flag carriers, for instance by reducing prices in response to even merely the threat of entry has been important for the development of the industry we see today, in addition to the growing domestic, regional and international policy debates on how to handle the carbon footprint of the sector in later years.

There are many possible directions for a thesis on this topic, for instance:

• What factors determine how an incumbent airline responds to increased threat of entry on a route?
• How would carbon taxation influence fleet choices and competition in the industry?
• What is the effect of loyalty programs on demand and competition?
• Differences in price discrimination across routes and carriers: What are the main drivers?
• Aircraft investment and the business cycle: A recipe for hysteresis?

Key literature:

Goolsbee, A. and Syverson, C. (2008) "How Do Incumbents Respond to the Threat of Entry? Evidence from the Major Airlines", Quarterly Journal of Economics, 123, pp. 1611–1633

Borenstein, S. and Rose, N. L. (1994) "Competition and Price Dispersion in the U.S. Airline Industry", Journal of Political Economy, 102, pp. 653–683

"Aviation Industry Leaders Report 2022: Recovery through Resilience", KPMG, edited by Victoria Tozer-Pennington 

Data: Data on number of passengers and prices for separate routes, airlines and ticket classes can be made available by supervisors.

Suitable for profiles: BAN, BUS, ECN, ECO, ENE, FIN

Possible supervisors: Lars Sørgard , Mateusz Mysliwski , Morten Sæthre

DO ECONOMIC BOOMS AND BUSTS AFFECT SLEEPING PATTERNS AND THE NUMBER OF HOURS OF LEISURE ACTIVITIES?

Although health is usually thought to worsen when the economy weakens, substantial recent research suggests that mortality actually declines during such periods. Could this decline in mortality be explained by people enjoying more free time and more sleep during recession?

Christopher J. Ruhm (2000): “Are Recessions Good for Your Health?” The Quarterly Journal of Economics, 115 (2): 617-650.

Data: Norwegian time use survey 1971-2010

DO SMOKING POLICIES AFFECT SMOKING BEHAVIOR AND DO BETTER-EDUCATED INDIVIDUALS REACT FASTER TO POLICY CHANGES?

The strong correlation between education and health, even after controlling for income, has been recognized as a robust empirical observation in the social sciences and economic literature (Deaton and Paxson 2003; Lleras-Muney 2004). The decision to smoke or not to smoke is a conscious choice that directly affects the health status and ultimately the mortality of individuals. It therefore provides an interesting opportunity to investigate how education, by influencing behaviors, affects health outcomes.

Damien de Walque (2010): “Education, Information, and Smoking Decisions: Evidence from Smoking Histories in the United States, 1940–2000” Journal of Human Resources, 45:682-717.

Data: Norwegian smoking habit survey from 1973-2011

Suitable for profiles:   ECO, ECN, (STR, INB, BUS)

(Note: Theses under this topic can be eligible for an Equinor scholarship for master theses .)

Suitable for profiles: BUS, ECN, ECO, ENE, FIN

(Tentative) supervisor:  Samuel D. Hirshman , Harim Kim, Eirik G. Kristiansen , Mateusz Mysliwski and/or Morten Sæthre

HOW CAN WE EXPLAIN CEO PAY?

There is a widespread suspicion that top managers and other key person are overpaid. They are frequently lavishly rewarded when the firm is lucky and not penalized when the firm is unlucky. Some receive discretionary severance pay that the firms are not committed to pay. Pay structure and level seem to depend on the owner structure. There are a large set of observations that are puzzling if you believe that owners should provide cost efficient incentives to managers. The project might examine pay structure in a particular industry or across countries and compare observations with empirical predictions from analytical models.

Bebchuk, L. A. and J. M. Fried (2004) Pay without performance: The unfulfilled promise of executive compensation, Harvard University Press

Suitable for profiles: ECO, ECN, FIN

Supervisor: Eirik Gaard Kristiansen

How should we pay for drugs? Is Netflix a model?

Health plans negotiate rebates on list prices with drug companies. If the net price is sufficiently low, the health plan may decide to include the drug in their plan so that the drug is reimbursed and available for patients. The current model is that health plans pay a uniform net price per unit purchased from the drug company. Recently, there has been proposed a different payment regime – called the Netflix model. Instead of paying a uniform price, proponents of the Netflix model argue that health plans should instead pay a fixed (subscription) fee to the drug company for getting access to the drug at marginal costs (or zero costs). The argument is that two-part tariffs is more efficient given the high innovation costs and low production costs. Opponents argue that the Netflix model will extract more consumer surplus and lead to higher costs for health plans. Some countries and health plans are now testing the Netflix model, which also seems to be relevant for the new covid-19 vaccine.

Barros, P. and X. Martinez-Giralt (2012) Health economics: an industrial organization perspective. Routledge. Chapter 17

The Economist (2019): The antibiotic industry is broken. Take inspiration from the entertainment industry. Leader.

Suitable for profiles: ECN, ECO, BUS, STR

Supervisor: Kurt R. Brekke

Data:  Data from eiendomnorge.no, real estate agencies

Suitable for profiles:  ECN, ECO, FIN, BAN

MANAGEMENT PRACTICES AND FIRMS

We know very little about the management practices in Norway. International data have shown that great differences exist between family businesses, multinationals and that the public sector has relatively worse management practices. Questions related to measurement and comparison of management practices invite to a great number of research ideas for a master thesis. You can explore  existing data sets, and create extended data by merging additional firm level information.

Corecon. Empirical Project 6: Measuring Management Practices

Data:  World Management Survey

Suitable for profiles:  ECN, FIN, STR.

Maximum likelihood estimation of a demand system

The almost ideal demand (AID) system was developed by Deaton and Muellbauer (1980).  It specifies a household’s set of demand functions for different goods and services.  The AID system combines flexibility and consistency with theoretical properties with a specification for the demand equations that allows for tractable estimation.

However, one of the weaknesses of the AID system is that the crucial property of negativity (that compensated demand functions should always slope downwards—the “law of demand”) cannot be imposed under estimation without giving up the flexibility of the system.

To remedy this weakness, Moschini (1998) suggested incorporating the negativity property “at the mean data point”, i.e., to make sure that if the household has the average income level and faces the average prices in the dataset, then its behavior respects the “law of demand”.  While not solving the problem completely, this is a big step forward.

The purpose of the thesis would be to write a maximum likelihood estimation programme in Stata that incorporates Moschini’s restriction, and use it on household budget survey data for Norway to obtain estimates for income and price elasticities.  

Deaton A and J Muellbauer (1980) An almost ideal demand system, American Economic Review 70 , 312-336.

Moschini (1998) The semi-flexible almost ideal demand system, European Economic Review 42 , 349-364.

Data: Household budget survey data collected by Statistics Norway (SSBs Forbruksundersøkelsen 1999-2012 )

Suitable for profiles : ECO, ECN

Merger remedies: Is the cure effective in restoring competition?

Mergers that restrict competition should be stopped by competition authorities. However companies may propose remedies that reduce or eliminate the competitive harm to get the merger cleared. Such remedies can be structural or behavioral. Structural remedies imply usually that competing activity are divested to a new or existing company in the market. Behavioral remedies are usually commitments to abstain from various forms of anti-competitive behavior for a given period after the merger. Merger remedies can be a win-win in the sense that the harm to competition can be solved and otherwise profitable mergers can be carried out. However recent studies show that this instrument in merger control is inefficient in restoring competition and that mergers that are cleared with remedies tend to result in price increases after the merger. Why is that? Is the problem mainly related to behavioral remedies? Are there inherent incentive or information problems? How can merger control be improved? This project should combine theory and data. Data can be made available upon request.

Kwoka, J. (2015): Mergers, merger control and remedies: a retrospective analysis of US policy. The MIT Press.

Supervisor: Lars Sørgard

The market for gift cards

In Norway, and in many other countries, gift cards have become popular. Both firms, organisations, and private persons buy gift cards as presents during the Christmas season or on occasions like birthdays. Like money, gift cards give the recipient a wider variety of things to choose from.  At the same time, gift cards are more memorable than an envelope with cash. But gift cards come with restrictions. They can only be used in certain stores/chains of stores, and they expire after a well-defined period. For these reasons, a second-hand market for gift cards has developed. You can buy gift cards on finn.no or Ebay at a discount of their nominal value.

Offenberg, Jennifer Pate (2007) "Markets: Gift Cards", Journal of Economic Perspectives, 21, pp. 227-238. 

Data:  Data from Finn.no, "Bygavekort" Bergen

Suitable for profiles: ECN, ECO

Possible supervisors: Fred Schroyen

THE PEAK-END-RULE AND DOMESTIC VIOLENCE

The peak-end-rule says that the most memorable parts of an experience is the peak (i.e the most enjoyable period) and the end. Daniel Kahneman and co-authors have for example shown that you can make patients better off by simply extending a painful medical treatment with a more joyful period at the end. The idea of this thesis proposal is to test the peak-end theory in a relevant, high-stake, real-world environment. In particular, the aim is to combine data from e.g. the Premier League in England  with regional data on domestic violence and other offensive behavior, and test whether football fans are more upset, and therefore make more criminal acts, when their team lost because of a goal occurring in the final minutes of the game as opposed to the same nominal loss, but were the score was determined earlier in the game. The thesis will also include a replication of the paper by Card and Dahl (2011) on prospect theory and violence

Key reference: 

Card and Dahl (2011), Family Violence and Football: The Effect of Unexpected Emotional Cues on Violent Behavior, Quarterly Journal of Economics

The use of budget survey data to estimate demand functions

In many countries, the statistical office regularly carries out a household budget survey.  Such a survey documents how households allocate their budget over different commodity and service groups.  The same statistical office also constructs price indices for different consumption categories.  Using these two data sources, the project would consist in estimating a system of demand functions that describes the price and income sensitivity of the different consumption categories, and in testing the microeconomic properties of such functions.  Estimation can be carried out with existing user friendly Stata programmes.

Banks J, R Blundell and A Lewbell (1997) Quadratic Engel Curves and Consumer Demand, Review of Economics and Statistics 79 , 527-539

Data:  Household budget survey data and price indices for your country

Suitable for profiles:  ECN, ECO.

Public Economics

Four topics on challenges in the electricity markets.

There is a dramatic transition taking place in energy markets, where renewable energy is about to replace energy based on fossil fuels. In Europe coal, gas and oil is about to be replaced by renewable energy such as solar power and wind power. One challenge, though, is that the renewable energy is intermittent. For example, wind power produces for full capacity in some time periods, and have zero production in other time periods. This irregularity may lead to increased volatility in electricity prices, with very low prices when the wind is blowing and very high prices else.

In the Norwegian electricity market more than 90 % of its production of electricity comes from hydro power. In contrast to renewable energy such a wind power, hydro power is flexible since water can be stored in reservoirs. Such a flexibility is valuable, since one can reallocate production such that it produces when it is most needed. On the other hand, the total supply of energy in a hydro power system during a year is dependent on the weather. In a wet year with a lot of rain, the total production in Norway is approximately 30 % higher than the domestic consumption. However, in a dry year the domestic supply is lower than the domestic demand.

Due to a move from fossil fuels to electricity, the domestic demand is expected to increase the next years in Norway (and other countries). Unless Norway expands production substantially in the coming years, which is unlikely given the (lack of) decisions that have been made concerning new power plants, the next ten years the periods with excess supply in the Norwegian electricity market will be fewer than before.

The present crisis, with gas being decisive for the prices in the electricity market for the whole of Europe, adds to the challenges Europe is facing with the transition to renewable energy. There is at present an ongoing debate in Europe whether there is a need for a structural reform of the market design of the electricity market. Some question the coordinated system of export or imports of electricity, while others question the model where the producer with the highest costs sets the price (the so called merit order system).

• Describe the present market design for electricity, and discuss pros and cons of the system that is used today. In particular, discuss how suitable such a system is for a future situation with much more intermittent electricity production (especially wind and solar power).
• Consider the situation for Norway, with mostly hydro power. Discuss how Norway can gain from trade with the rest of Europe. In particular, what are the pros and cons of building more transmission lines (or scrapping some existing ones) between Norway and surrounding countries.
• In Norway there is a rather high seller concentration in situations with bottlenecks on the transmission lines, and then markets becoming national or even smaller than that. Discuss how a producer with market power can behave in such a system, and whether there are any structural reforms that can curb any potential harmful exploitation of market power.
• There are some large producers in the Norwegian electricity market, with water reservoirs that makes it possible to store water even from one year to another. Discuss how such a player should allocate its sales of water in order to maximize profits, and relate your predictions from theory to what you observe in this market.

Possible majors: ECN, ECO, BUS, STR (depending on the focus of the thesis)

Possible supervisors: Depending on the approach you choose, but Lars Sørgard or other faculty members from the Department of Economics

HOW EFFECTIVE ARE THE NORWEGIAN INCENTIVE SCHEMES FOR ELECTRIC VEHICLES?

Several countries, including U.S.A., Canada and Norway, have introduced incentives to encourage the sale of electric vehicles and hybrid electric vehicles. There is a debate over the effectiveness of these policies in achieving the desired policy goals, such as reductions in CO2 emissions. The Norwegian incentive scheme is notable for high subsidies as well as other extensive benefits, including exemption from the registration tax, free toll roads, free parking, and programs for building charging stations. More detailed knowledge about the effects of specific parts of the incentive scheme would be helpful, both to inform possible improvements of the incentive schemes, but also for planning purposes in businesses and local governments. There are several open questions regarding the effect of the rich incentive scheme. One question regards how much the different policies contribute to increasing electric vehicle sales. A related question is whether they have differential impact on which modes of transportation consumers substitute away from, e.g., whether consumers substitute away from regular cars, public transport and biking, both at the intensive and the extensive margin. A master thesis on this topic could focus on one or several specific policies and subquestions.

Fearnley et al (2015): "E-vehicle policies and incentives - assessment and recommendations", TØI report 1421/2015; Chandra et al (2010): "Green drivers or free riders? An analysis of tax rebates for hybrids vehicles", Journal of Environmental Economics and Management 60: 78-93; Holtsmark (2012): "Elbilpolitikken - virker den etter hensikten?", Samfunnsøkonomen 5: 4-11

Data: Detailed data about car ownership including some usage measures per vehicle can be provided by the supervisor, in addition to data on tollroads and charging stations.

Suitable for profiles: ECO, ECN, ENE, BUS, FIE, INB

Supervisor: Morten Sæthre

REGULATION OF FINANCIAL MARKETS: HOW CAN THE POLITICAL PROCESS PRODUCE VERY DIFFERENT REGULATIONS ACROSS COUNTRIES?

Improved financial market regulation ensure that information is widely spread and investors can trust information and contracts. However, not all parties benefit from better regulation. For example, some established firms dislike that new entrants obtain financing, demand for labour may increase which again will increase wages.  In an influential book, Rajan and Zingales describe how financial regulation across countries can be explained by political forces in favour and against better regulation. A possible project would be to discuss how strong labour unions, industry structure, openness to trade and other institutional characteristics can explain the current regulation in Norway. The project might combine insights from analytical approaches discussed in Tirole with the empirical literature discussed in the book by Rajan and Zingales.

Rajan R. G. and L. Zingales (2003), Saving capitalism from the capitalists Princeton University Press.

Tirole, J (2006) The theory of Corporate Finance, see chapter 16 on Institutions, Public Policy and the Political Economy of Finance, Princeton University Press.

TECHNOLOGY MARKETS: HOW TO (NOT) SELL TECHNOLOGIES?

The best innovators are often not the best producers. Many patented technologies with different owners need to be used together in order to produce a valuable product. Consequently, there should be a vivid market for technology transactions. However, many claim that the market is smaller than expected and not working very well. Knowhow is not easy to sell: None are willing to buy something before they have seen it, and when they have seen it (and can use it) why should they pay for it? Will the patent system solve the problem or can patenting prevent investments in new technologies. You might use Apple (or another firm) as a motivating example for a study of how firms might organize sales and purchases of technologies?

Bessen, J. and M.J. Meurer, (2008) Patent failure: How judges, bureaucrats, and lawyers put innovation at risk, Princeton University Press.

Jaffe, A. B. and J. Lerner (2004): Innovation and its Discontents: How our broken patent system is endangering innovation and progress, and what to do about it, Princeton University Press

Suitable for profiles: ECO, ECN, FIN, STR

The death of Queen Elizabeth II.-a Monetary policy shock

Queen Elizabeth II. died on 8 September 2022. The queen liked to "keep calm, and carry on" whatever happened. In contrast to this spirit, the next day Bank of England announced delaying their upcoming pre-scheduled monetary policy meeting from 15 to 22 September. The rescheduling was unexpected, i.e., an exogenous monetary policy shock. This time it was not an unexpected decision but an unexpected `lack of.` Financial markets expected a new interest rate hike. However, for a further week, interest rates stayed the same.

The thesis investigates the effect of this unexpected delay of MPC decisions on financial markets. Our method to isolate this story from other news events is to use high-frequency data in a narrow window around the announcement.

Nakamura, Emi, and Jón Steinsson. Forth- coming. “High Frequency Identification of Monetary Non-Neutrality: The Information Effect.” Quarterly Journal of Economics

Supervisors:   Markus Karlman and Krisztina Molnar  

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Economics Dissertation Topics

Microeconomics.

• To what extent does the concentration in the industry determine individual firm profitability?
• How does competition in the market determine corporate strategies for growth?
• Impact of the covid pandemic on the market entry modes practised by corporations.
• How do models of funding of non-profit organisations affect their sustainability?
• Privatization of Public Enterprises and its implications on economic policy and development
• Fraud and Abuse in Non-profit Organizations
• Antitrust Practices and Market Power in the UK
• Effect of antitrust regulations on the performance of the IT sphere in the UK
• Antitrust regulation of horizontal mergers
• Challenges for the industry from digitalisation
• How changes in industrial structure affected economic growth in China?
• How can Brexit change industrial policies in the UK?
• Effect of covid on the entertainment industry
• Perspectives of the alternative energy industry over the world
• Contribution of smart materials to the development of the construction industry
• Transformation of consumer tastes over the last two decades
• How do local culture and mentality affect entrepreneurial behaviour and inclination to running a business?
• How does the behaviour of single-person households differ from the behaviour of couple-based households?
• Product life cycle in the era of digitalisation
• Influence of IT on product development
• Crowd funding as a driver of product development
• How did Covid-19 affect economic inequality?
• Dynamics of the Gini index as an indicator of income distribution
• Forces behind income inequality in the UK
• Is economic equilibrium attainable in the modern world?
• How will equilibrium change after the covid-19 pandemic
• The effect of trade liberalisation on general economic equilibrium
• Impact of the informal sector of the economy on welfare
• Potential consequences of the unconditional income introduction
• Effect of covid-19 on income distribution in the UK
• Collective decision-making in social networks
• Collective decision making on mergers and acquisitions
• Analysis of decision making on tourism destinations
• How uncertainty affects decision making?
• Career perspectives in the knowledge economy
• The effect of covid on uncertainty in a particular market
• Job search from the perspective of behavioural economics
• The role of emotions in personal investing strategies
• What drives customers to change mobile operators?

Macroeconomics

• How do demand and supply control market forces in the UK?
• Should the neoclassical growth model be revised in conditions of the modern world?
• How does covid affect aggregate spending in the UK?
• Do interest rates affect consumption in the UK?
• Does consumption depend on the country’s currency exchange rate?
• What industries were hit by covid most of all in terms of production?
• Do consumer prices move synchronously in EU countries under the regime of inflation targeting?
• What counter-cyclical measures can help to mitigate economic turmoil?
• How do oil prices affect business activities in oil importing and oil-exporting countries?
• How do interest rates affect investment activities?
• Analysis of money supply in developing and developed economies
• Is interest rates an effective instrument of inflation control in developing countries?
• Forward Guidance as an Instrument of Monetary Policy: Experiences and Prospects
• Does money supply influence rates of economic growth?
• Is austerity an appropriate instrument of reducing national debt?
• Influence of political situation on macroeconomic regulation in the UK.
• How do macroeconomic policies affect capital structure of firms?
• How do recommendations of international organisations (WB, WTO, IMF) affect macroeconomic policies of developing countries?
• The use of big data in behavioural economics at the macrolevel
• Public policy formulation through the lens of behavioural economics
• How to bridge the gap between the theory and practice of behavioural macroeconomics?

International Economy

• International trade as a factor of growth of developing economies
• The effect of IT on restructuring international trade
• How IT progress changed international value chains
• How did covid affect international business activities?
• The most prospective developing markets for international business
• Tendencies in international factor movements over the last decade
• Are there preconditions for creating new currency unions anywhere in the world?
• Latest tendencies in international finance: liberalisation or restrictions?
• Is the current global financial system viable?
• The most prospective regional trade unions
• What are the most attractive destinations for FDI right now?
• The impact of FDI on economic growth in developing countries
• How will the inauguration of Joe Biden change the US-China relations?
• Macroeconomic drivers of local armed conflicts
• Comparison of macroeconomic structure of the US and China
• The impact of globalisation on poverty
• Does IT affect poverty in the global scale?
• How does globalisation influence corruption in the global scale?

Financial Economics

• Reaction of financial markets to covid-19
• How mutual funds change their risk-taking strategies depending on different incentives
• How did financial markets react to the Biden win?
• How FinTech companies affect the sphere of financial services
• The latest accomplishments in the sphere of financial engineering
• How IT changes competition in the sphere of financial services
• Has covid changed corporate governance practices in the UK?
• The effect of corporate governance procedures on capital structure in developing countries
• Does IT progress influence companies’ investment in R&D?
• Behavioural finance and its influence on investing decisions
• Is behavioural finance able to completely explain investment decisions?
• How personal characteristics of an investor explain their investment decisions
• Patterns in spending of single-person households and couple households
• Has covid changed inclination to saving among households?
• The role of mediators in the mortgage market

Labour and Demographic Economics

• Economic effects of changes in demographic structure
• The relationship between the number of children and family wellbeing in developing countries
• Does the child-free movement have a real impact on demographic situation in the UK?
• Does Affirmative Action Reduce Gender Discrimination in the Labor Market? Recent Evidence for Developing Countries
• Has covid changed the demand for labour in the EU?
• Digitalisation and changes in labour market
• The influence of marital status on income
• How does marital status impacts labour force structure?
• What are the reasons behind regional wage inequality in the EU.
• Influence of uberisation on labour force structure.
• The demand for refugee labour force in the EU.
• Benefits and disadvantages of being self-employed
• Strategic HR management and trade unions
• A critical analysis of collective bargaining in the context of the UK
• Do all participants of the single market have the same collective bargaining conditions?
• The influence of regional disparity of income on labour mobility
• How has covid changed unemployment patterns in the UK?
• What is the contribution of immigrant workers to GDP of the UK?
• Differences in labour standards between top-5 European football leagues
• An overview of labour laws in the tourist sector across EU countries
• UK labour regulations: drawbacks to be amended in the future

Development Economics and Innovation

• What are the most relevant indicators of economic development?
• The influence of population growth on developing economies: case study of India.
• Exploring the relationship between migration and economic development
• How do land regulations affect the pace of development in developing countries?
• Ecovillages: regulation and development prospects
• What are the residential location preferences of the new generation of millennials?
• Instruments of funding innovations
• Issues of protecting intellectual property rights of start-ups
• Impact of technological change on productivity in the manufacturing industry
• How does trade openness affects aggregate productivity of the economy? On the sample of Australia
• What affects productivity in the long run?
• The impact of structural change on productivity in developing economies
• Economic development in Russia: effects of privatisation
• Economic implications of climate change in developing countries
• Economy wide effect of free trade agreements: the case of developing countries

Agricultural and Natural Resource Economics, Environmental and Ecological Economics

• The effect of technology on productivity of the agricultural sector in developing countries.
• How do labour force flows affect agricultural sector performance in an emerging economy?
• Managing livestock farm as a business: issues and benefits
• Sustainable management practices in fish industry
• Benefits and methods of energy conservation
• Influence of renewable energy sources: economic, social and environmental aspects
• Management of non-renewable sources in the context of Germany.
• How does depletion of resources affect the UK economy?
• Methods of monitoring and control of non-renewable resources
• What is the potential of the solar energy in the world market of energy?
• Opportunities, benefits and drawbacks of alternative energy sources
• What are the main sources of risk in the sphere of renewable energy?
• Water management and conservation policies: A comparative study of the UK and Malaysia.
• The influence of climate policies on economic development.
• How can innovations contribute to the development of an eco-friendly economy?

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