Belarusian Economic Research
and Outreach Center
220088 Беларусь, г.Минск, ул.Захарова, 50Б, к.36
Тел: +375172100105
www.beroc.by
beroc@beroc.by
Program of the Second Student School on Modern Economics
Place: Business Center of the hotel Victoria (Minsk, 59 Pobediteley ave., conference-hall on the
3rd floor)
Dates: January 21-30, 2013
Course description
Microeconomics.
Instructor – Alexander Kovzik, University of Wisconsin – Oshkosh, kovzik@uwosh.edu
Day 1 (21 January): Functions of several variables. Inverse demand and supply curves.
Equilibrium with linear and nonlinear curves. Shocking the equilibrium. Elasticity: general
definition. Marginal revenue and elasticity. The inverse elasticity rule. Market equilibrium: an
elasticity interpretation. Tax incidence analysis. Deadweight loss and elasticity.
Day 2 (22 January): Utility and indifference curves. A Cobb-Douglas utility function.
Constrained consumer choice: interior and corner solutions. Income and substitution effects.
Slutsky equation. Compensated demand curves. Cost-of-living adjustments. Deriving labor
supply curves.
Short-run and long-run production. Production functions. Isoquant maps and the rate of technical
substitution. Returns to scale. Isocost lines. Cost minimization. Relationship between short-run
and long-run cost curves.
Day 3 (23 January): Profit maximization: first order and second order conditions. Lerner index.
Market structures. The supply decision of a competitive firm. Monopoly pricing. Welfare effects
of monopoly. Regulating monopolies. Nonuniform pricing: price discrimination and two-part
tariffs. Pareto efficiency. Efficiency in product mix. Efficiency in production. Competitive prices
and efficiency. Departing from the competitive assumptions.
Econometrics.
Instructors – Kateryna Bornukova (theory), Maryia Akulava and Dzmitry Kruk (practice),
BEROC; bornukova@beroc.by, akulava@beroc.by, dekruk@gmail.com
Day 1 (24 January): Introduction to econometrics. Data types and data analysis. OLS estimator,
its properties. Testing parameters. Possible problems: heteroscedasticity, multicollinearity.
Misspecification and endogeneity. Sample selection problems.
Practice: OLS regression and coefficient tests in STATA. Testing for possible problems.
Day 2 (25 January): Panel Data. Pooled OLS. Fixed effects, random effects. Dealing with
autocorrelation in panels. Limited dependent variable models
Practice: panel data and limited dependent variables in Stata.
Day 3 (26 January): Introduction to time series. Stationarity. ARMA models. Brief introduction
into cointegration, VECM and VAR models.
Testing time series data for stationarity. ARMA modeling. VECM and VAR models.
Macroeconomics.
Instructor – Kiryl Haiduk, senior researcher at BEROC, haiduk@beroc.by
This course aims to introduce students to the basic concepts, models, and tools used in
contemporary mainstream macroeconomics. The course will take place over three days. The first
day would be devoted to the models of growth. During the second day, a range of important
themes would be covered, including inflation, unemployment, and business cycles. On the third
day, students would be exposed to a model of open macroeconomics, namely a Dornbusch’s
‘overshooting’ model. The concepts and models taught in the course would not only be
introduced in a formal, textbook way, but also applied to interpret performance of the Belarusian
economy.
Day 1 (28 January): Schools of thought in macroeconomics: Classical, Keynesian, New
classical, New Keynesian, Post-Keynesian, and Austrian; Introduction to economic growth;
Models of economic growth: The Solow Model, Ramsey-Cass-Koopmans Model; The
Economics of Ideas: Endogenous Growth Theory.
Day 2 (29 January): Economic growth (continued): Overlapping Generations Model; New
Classical Economics: Rational expectations, the Phillips Curve; Business cycles, Political
business cycle.
Day 3 (30 January): Open Economy Macroeconomics. Dornbusch’s overshooting model.
Literature
Dornbusch, R. (1976) ‘Expectations and exchange rate dynamics’, Journal of Political
Economy, 84, December, pp. 1161–1176.
Drazen, A. (2002) Political Economy in Macroeconomics, Princeton University Press,
Princeton, New Jersey.
Felderer, B. and Homburg, S. (1992) Macroeconomics and New Macroeconomics, 2nd
Edition, Springer-Verlag, Berlin and New York
Jones, C. (2001) Introduction to Economic Growth, 2nd edition, W. Norton and Company,
New York.
Romer, D, (2005) Advanced Macroeconomics, 3rd edition, McGraw-Hill/Irwin.
Snowdon, B., Vane, H., and Wynarczyk, P. (1994) A Modern Guide to Macroeconomics:
An Introduction to Competing Schools of Thought, Edward Elgar, Cheltenham.