Course content
Evaluation of public and private interventions requires being analytical with data and curious about the ambiguity and trade-offs involved in the implementation of such programs. For instance, does exposure to long hours increase Amazon workers' productivity by securing higher wages, or does it reduce productivity by decreasing retention? Does a public intervention in the form of a social media campaign positively or negatively affect vaccination rates? This course introduces a wide range of quantitative methods that allow researchers and practitioners to answer these types of empirical questions, whose answers are ex ante ambiguous, with a rigorous data analysis.
Policymakers, civil society, and businesses often need to demonstrate that investments in projects, programs, and interventions are spent effectively. Hence, the knowledge acquired in this course enables students to solve empirical questions that inevitably arise when evaluating projects in the economic consulting industry. By solving relevant practical exercises and problems in STATA and R (softwares widely used in the consulting industry), the methods taught in this course will enable students to perform comprehensive data analyses of problems typically encountered in economic consulting jobs, whether in international consulting firms (such as Copenhagen Economics and Rambøll Management Consulting), multinational companies (such as Amazon and Microsoft), ministerial departments (such as VIVE), or international organizations (such as OECD, World Bank, and the IMF).
Methods for Economic Consulting emphasize the practical implications of each method introduced in class to a much larger extent than standard data/statistics courses, which tend to focus mainly on theoretical aspects. Additionally, one/two economic consultants will be invited to give talks during the summer school, allowing students to gain practical insights into the methods studied in this course and network with local and international experts in the field of Economic Consulting. In previous editions of this course, we have hosted talks by economic consultants from MIT, Rambøll, Deloitte Economics, Ernst & Young, Copenhagen Economics, VIVE, and the World Bank, to name a few.
All the practical aspects emphasized in the course will enable students to place their business and economic consulting knowledge in a broader context. Students will learn that the methods studied in the course can be applied to a wide range of issues and projects spanning different areas (such as Environmental Economics, Labor and Personnel Economics, Public Health, Political Science, Sociology etc.). As highlighted by a guest speaker from the consulting industry: "The approach to sustainable economics and finance in our economic consulting company is not just about unconditional economic growth. It's about creating a thriving society that meets the needs of all within the means of the planet. This may sound like a vague objective, but the methods studied in this course help us understand whether the interventions implemented by either the public sector or private businesses achieve the desired goal of sustainable economic growth given the ecological ceiling." The highly international profile of the guest speakers will allow students to create value for the Danish labor market through global connections.
See course description in course catalogue