S312/S322 Bachelor Thesis in Empirical Economics (BSc)
Lecturer: | Prof. Dr. Martin Biewen Jacqueline Gut Henri Pfleiderer Simon Zeller | |
Profiles: | B.Sc. in Economics and Business Administration B.Sc. in International Economics B.Sc. in International Business Administration | |
Prerequisites: | Applied Econometrics (or similar) | |
Language: | English (German possible) | |
Time and Place: | See timeline below | |
Exam: | 1) Presentation of draft (20 min) 2) Bachelor thesis (20 pages) 3) Presentation of bachelor thesis (20 min) | |
Credits: | 12 ECTS |
Timeline
until 13.10.2025, 11:55pm | Upload transcript of records to the Ilias folder and fill out the survey | |
until 18.10.2025 | Assignment to supervising chair | via email |
until 25.10.2025 | Discussion of the chosen topic with assigned supervisor | |
tba | Start of working time | |
tba | Interim presentation and feedback | |
tba
| Deadline for submission of bachelor thesis (printed copy to office, pdf to supervisor) | |
tba | Presentation of final thesis (mandatory participation in whole day seminar) | time and format tba |
General information
- The aim of the bachelor thesis is to show the ability of a student to examine and to discuss a problem or a subject in statistics or econometrics in a scientific way.
- The bachelor thesis covers a maximum of 20 pages. Main figures and tables should be included in the main body of your thesis. Extensive figures and tables should be deferred to the appendix. The appendix is not included in the page limit.
- The final grade is based on the written thesis (70 percent) and the final presentation (30 percent).
- Students should choose their topic on their own. The topic should be discussed in advance with the supervisor. For an empirical thesis, the student needs to find, process and handle the datasets themselves.
- If you are interested in carrying out your own empirical project we recommend you to read chapter 19 "Carrying out an Empirical Project" of Wooldridge's book "Introductory Econometrics".
- Students have to submit a printed copy by the time and date stated above at the office of the chairs and an electronic (pdf-format) version by the same time to their personal supervisors.
- The bachelor thesis and the presentation should be in English (but German theses and presentations will be accepted as well).
Formal guidelines
- Formal guidelines for the written thesis are provided in the Ilias folder.
- Orthography, grammar and style of the thesis will be taken into account for grading.
- The written thesis should be set in Word, or, preferably, in LaTeX or a similar word/formula-processing software. The following template (pdf) illustrates the use of LaTeX.
- The presentation of the final thesis has to be in Powerpoint, LaTeX or similar. There is no need for handouts.
Plagiarism and academic fraud
It is strictly forbidden to: i) copy/paste text from existing publications outside a regular quote, ii) copy essential thoughts or structures from existing work without acknowledging their sources, iii) use substantial external help in carrying out research or writing without acknowledging this, iv) produce fake research results. Any violations of these rules may lead to exmatriculation. Academic fraud may also destroy your career if discovered later in your life. We will use software to detect potential academic misconduct.