Barcelona School of Economics (BSE) - Labor Economics Summer School 2024

This summer school offers courses that will cover recent developments within the macro-labor and micro-labor contexts. In each course, both theoretical and empirical aspects will be covered as well as economic policy. These courses should be of interest to graduate students or academics who want to expand their knowledge in the area and to practitioners interested in understanding the fundamentals of these issues. During the courses, faculty are available to discuss research ideas and projects with the program participants.

After attending any of the courses offered at the labor summer school, students will have a 360 degree view of the topic studied and be up to date with the latest advancements.

Course list for 2024

Week of July 3-7, 2024 (Face-to-face)

• Wage Determination
  Instructor: Derek Neal (University of Chicago)
• Gender Economics
  Instructor: Libertad González (UPF and BSE)
• Economics of Migration
  Instructor: Joan Llull (IAE-CSIC and BSE)

Course descriptions

Wage Determination

• This course explores the determination of wages. It explores how and why wages evolve over the life-cycle of workers and also why wages vary among different types of workers who are in their prime working years. We begin by comparing models that describe how the process of finding good job matches influences life-cycle wage growth to models that attribute life-cycle wage growth to human capital accumulation. We then consider how public policy impacts the extent to which successful adults are able to impact the relative labor market success of their children by investing in their human capital, and we explore how race and gender impact labor market outcomes in different developed countries. We then examine the impacts of technology, firm characteristics, industry structure, and related factors on the distribution of wages. Finally, we examine how, within firms, employers may employ incentive systems that create ex post wage dispersion that exceeds the ex ante variation in worker skill.

Gender Economics

• This course uses economic analysis to explore gender differences in economic outcomes, in both the labor market and the household. Men earn on average higher wages than women. Men and women concentrate in different occupations, and women are under-represented in the political sphere and high-powered occupations. Women attain on average higher levels of schooling than men, and they take on a higher share of household chores and childcare. Why these differences? Do they represent a problem? Should families, schools, firms, or governments do something about it? This course will provide you with an overview of a recent literature in economics that documents gender gaps in a range of domains, try to uncover the factors that drive them, and evaluates the effectiveness of different policies in mitigating them.

Economics of Migration

• In the world, more than 220 million individuals live in a country different from that of birth. In developed countries, foreign born individuals represent 10.5% of the population. This important factor reallocation is the result of decades of increasing globalization of labor markets. Why people migrate, who migrates where, and what are the economic impacts for the receiving economy, are important questions that have motivated a huge body of research in Economics. The main objective of this course is to explore the different answers provided in the literature to these questions.

Additional information

There is a Presentation-skills workshop every day at lunchtime (lunch provided) for all students. This workshop offers skills to prepare clear and effective academic presentations of research papers; it also includes a call for papers for students who wish to present their work.

If you are interested in submitting a paper for review, please make your submission at: summerschool@bse.eu. 

Please put "Labor presentation skills workshop" in the subject line of your email. The deadline for submitting papers is May 30, and the schedule for the presentation of papers will be announced when the selection of papers has been finalized. At the end of the Summer School, participants who have presented a paper will receive an additional certificate.

Credit transfers (ECTS)

Students will deliver a short summary of a paper one week after the summer school finishes. It will consist in a critical summary of a published paper, around 3-4 pages, 1.5 spaced, font size 11. The critical summary will need to follow these guidelines: expose what are the main ideas of the paper, how they are addressed, strength and weakness of the paper, methodological approach, theoretical or empirical background, and suggestions for improvements).

Consult the Credit Transfer page for more information about this option.

Certificate of attendance

Participants not interested in credit transfer will instead receive a Certificate of Attendance, stating the courses and number of hours completed. These students will be neither evaluated nor graded. There is no fee for the certificate.