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Bachelor's Thesis

We are very pleased that you would like to write your bachelor thesis at the Microeconomics Research Group. Both students of economics and business administration can write their bachelor thesis either in German or in English at our Research Group.

If you are interested in one of the topics listed, please write us an e-mail to  to schedule an appointment with your desired adviser.

  • Questions



    Costs and Benefits of Overconfidence

    Many people overestimate their abilities in comparison to others, a phenomenon that is usually referred to as “Overconfidence” in the relevant literature. Which costs and benefits come with overconfidence, and how are they economically relevant?

    Adviser: Stefanie Brilon

    Reference:
    Moore, D. A., & Schatz, D. (2017). The three faces of overconfidence. Social and Personality Psychology Compass, 11(8), e12331.
    Santos-Pinto, L., & de la Rosa, L. E. (2020). Overconfidence in labor markets. Handbook of Labor, Human Resources and Population Economics, 1-42.

    Public vs Private Education in Germany

    How to describe a production function for education? Which factors matter? Using this larger topic as background, the questions to be considered here are the role of private education in Germany in general, which groups in the population are particularly drawn towards private education and whether this has consequences for society, access to education and inequality.

    Adviser: Stefanie Brilon

    References:
    Todd, P. E., & Wolpin, K. I. (2003). On the specification and estimation of the production function for cognitive achievement. The Economic Journal, 113(485), F3-F33.
    Ammermueller, A. (2007). Poor background or low returns? Why immigrant students in Germany perform so poorly in the programme for international student assessment. Education Economics, 15(2), 215-230.
    Jungbauer-Gans, M., Lohmann, H., & Katharina Spieß, C. (2012). Bildungsungleichheiten und Privatschulen in Deutschland. In Soziologische Bildungsforschung (pp. 64-85). Springer VS, Wiesbaden.
    Preuschoff, C., & Weiß, M. (2004). Schulleistungen in staatlichen und privaten Schulen im Vergleich-eine Übersicht über neuere Forschungsergebnisse. Trends in Bildung international, (8), 1-4.


    Gender Quotas in Politics

    Gender quotas in politics have been discussed extensively in recent years and have been implemented in some areas. In this context, several research questions merit consideration, among them the following: Do quotas have an effect on the quality of politicians? Can female politicians act as a role model and thus clear the way for more political engagement by women? Is there an effect on political agendas and priorities? Are quotas a useful instrument to increase the share of female politicians or are there better alternatives?

    Adviser: Stefanie Brilon

    References:
    Besley, Timothy, Olle Folke, Torsten Persson, and Johanna Rickne. 2017. "Gender Quotas and the Crisis of the Mediocre Man: Theory and Evidence from Sweden." American Economic Review, 107 (8): 2204-42.
    Baskaran, Thushyanthan, and Zohal Hessami. "Does the election of a female leader clear the way for more women in politics?." American Economic Journal: Economic Policy 10.3 (2018): 95-121.
    Bagues, Manuel, and Pamela Campa. "Can gender quotas in candidate lists empower women? Evidence from a regression discontinuity design." Journal of Public Economics 194 (2021): 104315.

    Behavioral Economics and Natural Resources

    Many people are in favor of using fewer natural resources. Yet, sticking to this goal on an everyday basis is often quite difficult. Could instruments from behavioral economics help to reduce the use of natural resources on the household level?

    Adviser: Stefanie Brilon

    References:
    List, J. A., & Price, M. K. (2020). The use of field experiments in environmental and resource economics. Review of Environmental Economics and Policy.


    Stop Rhino Poaching – A Market Analysis (March 2022)

    According to the foundation, “Save the Rhino”, 10.000 rhinos were poached in Africa in the last 10 years. How could supply
    and demand be influenced? Could a legal market reduce the number of killed animals? Or could synthetic horn offer an alternative?

    Adviser: Stefanie Brilon

    References to get you started:
    Broad, Steven, and Gayle Burgess. "Synthetic biology, product substitution and the battle against illegal wildlife trade." Traffic Bulletin 28.1 (2016): 22-28.
    Collins, Alan, Gavin Fraser, and Jen Snowball. "Rhino poaching: supply and demand uncertain." Science 340.6137 (2013): 1167-1167.


    Which effects from liberal-paternalistic interventions on the evolution of social norms are to be expected?

    In the last decades, behavioral economics identified many behavioral anomalies, i.e., deviations from complete rationality. A broad string of literature took these results and developed new, liberal forms of paternalistic intervention. In this thesis, you discuss that literature, its major insights, and its policy implications. In your focus should be a detailed analysis of the underlying theories and a differentiated deconstruction of the effects on how well-being is defined, if liberal forms of paternalistic intervention are put into political praxis.

    Adviser: Philipp Bösherz

    References to get you started:
    Kirchgässner, G. (2014) Sanfter Paternalismus, meritorische Güter, und der normative Individualismus. List Forum für Wirtschafts-und Finanzpolitik, 40 (3), S. 210-238. Schnellenbach, J. (2011) Wohlwollendes Anschubsen: Was ist mit liberalem Paternalismus zu erreichen und was sind seine Nebenwirkungen? Perspektiven der Wirtschaftspolitik, 12 (4), S. 445-459. Thaler, R. und Sunstein C. (2016) Nudge: wie man kluge Entscheidungen anstößt. Berlin: Ullstein.


    Organ Transplantation, Organ Donation, and Organ Allocation

    Demand for organs, tissues, and cells exceed supply by far. Why is this the case? The wider public as well as the scientific
    community already discussed various proposals to solve this challenge. In recent public discussions in Germany, the focus was on the question if everybody should donate their organs in case of brain death, except from individuals who explicitly rejected this. Within this huge topic, your task is to tackle one subject from an economic point of view, while considering ethical and normative questions as well.

    Adviser: Philipp Bösherz

    References to get you started:
    Ahlert, Marlies; Kliemt, Hartmut (2013): Problems of priority change in kidney allocation and beyond. In: The European Journal of Health Economics 14 (3), S. 383–390. Kliemt, Hartmut (2001): Organtransplantation im Eurotransplantverbund. In: Analyse & Kritik 23 (2), S. 133–155. Platz, Trine Tornøe; Siersbæk, Nikolaj; Østerdal, Lars Peter (2019): Ethically Acceptable Compensation for Living Donations of Organs, Tissues, and Cells. An Unexploited Potential? In: Applied health economics and health policy 17 (1), S. 1–14.


    What Is Utility? And How Does It Matter?

    Molnar and Loewenstein (2021, p. 4) write: “This alternative perspective, now commonly referred to as ‘belief-based utility,’ recognizes the basic insight that can be traced back to Bentham: that people derive utility—pleasure and pain—directly from their beliefs.” Binmore (2011, p.19) on the other hand states: “In revealed-preference theory, it isn't true that Pandora chooses b rather than a because the utility of b exceeds the utility of of a. This is the Causal Utility Fallacy. It isn't even true that Pandora chooses b rather than a because she prefers b to a. On the contrary, it is because Pandora chooses b rather than a that we say that Pandora prefers b to a, and assign b a larger utility."
    In your bachelor thesis you search for different economic accounts of utility, analyze their differences and commonalities, and explore the implications the different accounts have for modeling in microeconomics as well as for the conclusions that can be drawn from such models.

    Adviser: Philipp Bösherz

    Literature:
    Binmore, K. G. (2011): Rational decisions. Princeton: Princeton University Press (The Gorman lectures in economics).
    Molnar, Andras; Loewenstein, George F. (2021): Thoughts and Players: An Introduction to Old and New Economic Perspectives on Beliefs. In: SSRN Journal. DOI: 10.2139/ssrn.3806135.
    Vredenburgh, Kate (2020): A unificationist defence of revealed preferences. In: Economics and Philosophy 36 (1), S. 149–169. DOI: 10.1017/s0266267118000524.


    Regression Discontinuity Design

    RDD is a technique that has proved helpful in dealing with self-selection problems in micro-empirical studies. The methodology is comparable in efficiency to other more complicated microeconometric techniques. The aim of this study is to answer the empirical studies with the methodology to answer questions related to educational economics. The focus is on studies that examine variables that reflect education, whether in the form of cognitive or labor market outcomes.

    Adviser: Kareem Hamdy

    Literature: 
    Ozier, Owen, "The Impact of secondary schooling in Kenya: A regression discontinuity analyses." Journal of Human Resources (2016).

    The Evolution of Household Portfolio

    This topic explores the history and change in household financial portfolio, not only in historical context, but also within geographical context. In addition to the positive evaluation of different patterns, microeconomic models that aim to explain those patterns would be reviewed and analyzed.  The topic is the subject of a small but rather growing branch of the finance literature. The research strategy would be to find a specific point of focus in this area. The following two papers serve as examples for specific research questions.

    Adviser: Kareem Hamdy

    Literature:
    Brunnermeier, M. K., & Nagel, S. (2008). Do wealth fluctuations generate time-varying risk aversion? Micro-evidence on individuals. American Economic Review, 98(3), 713-36.
    Brown, J. R., & Finkelstein, A. (2007). Why is the market for long-term care insurance so small?. Journal of Public Economics, 91(10), 1967-1991.

  • Hint

    We have summarized the most important notes on the preparation in terms of procedure, formal appearance, literature acquisition and cooperation with companies in a single document.