PhD Seminar of the Department of Economics

Aims of the Course

Students will learn about how to present and discuss papers in a conference-style environment. They will receive constructive feedback on the content and style of their work and presentation from a discussant, the audience and senior researchers. Moreover, they will learn how to discuss a paper and chair a session. These meeting will also present an opportunity to socialize and exchange ideas.

Agenda

Seminars normally take place from 4:15pm - 5:30pm, PER 21, room F205. A detailed schedule will be published before the next seminar takes place.
Presentation slots can be reserved on a first come, first serve basis. Please send your inquiry to Elsa Gautrain.

 

PhD Seminars 2024

  • September

    September 19,
    Presenter: Giovanni Valvassori Bolgè
    Title: Mechanism Design by a Politician
    Abstract: A set of agents has to make a decision about the provision of a public good and its financing. Agents have heterogeneous values for the public good and each agent’s value is private information. An agenda-setter has the right to make a proposal about a public-good level and a vector of contributions. For the proposal to be approved, only the favourable votes of a subset of agents are needed. If the proposal is not approved, a type-dependent outside option is implemented. I characterize the optimal public-good provision and the coalition-formation for any outside option in dominant strategies. Optimal public-good provision might be a non-monotonic function of the outside option public-good level. Moreover, the optimal coalition might be a non-convex set of types.

  • October

    October 3,
    Presenter: Elsa Gautrain
    Title: Child Fostering and Nutrition in South Africa

    October 17,
    Presenter: TBC

  • November

    November 28,
    Presenter: Thibaut Arpinon
    Title: TBA

  • December

    December 12,
    Presenter: TBC
    Room: E130

Contributions

In general, doctoral students are offered a presentation slot of about 50 minutes (20-30 min presentation, and general discussion) or a shorter slot, e.g. for presenting a research idea, of about 25 minutes (short presentation and discussion). However, doctoral students may suggest an alternative format that better fits their needs. The seminar is particularly designed for doctoral students and researchers in economics and social sciences of the University of Fribourg. PhD students and researchers from other Swiss and international universities are also welcome to present their work. Participants can present their dissertation project or a paper (at any stage of work). Presentations can be held in English, French or German. Presentation slides should always be in English.