CIMS Online Summer Schools on Macroeconomics/DSGE (Foundation or Advanced) and International Trade/Gravity Models

This is a Virtual Summer school (online) this year.

Applications are now open for CIMS summer school 2023.

              APPLY HERE

This year's Summer school will feature:

• Macroeconomics and DSGE: Foundation or Advanced

The target participants will choose one of the two parallel five-day courses as follows:

1. Foundations course is aimed at early researchers with some knowledge of Real Business Cycle (RBC) or Dynamic Stochastic General Equilibrium (DSGE) macroeconomic models, but little or no experience with Dynare. This course assumes a basic knowledge of Matlab and will begin with the basics of Dynare and proceed to the construction, in stages, of a closed economy NK DSGE model. It will then progress to the estimation of the model by Bayesian methods and finish by extending the NK DSGE model to the open economy and replacing rational expectations with a behavioural approach.
2. Advanced course is aimed at researchers who are already fluent in Dynare and DSGE modelling or who wish to directly learn more advanced techniques. This course will be useful both for advanced PhD students, academic researchers, and central bank researchers engaged in macroeconomic modelling work. The advanced course covers models that are either computationally expensive to simulate, nonlinear, require additional recursive assumptions, or have infinite dimensional state-spaces thanks to heterogeneous agents.

The foundations and advanced courses will run in parallel for five days from 11-15 September.

• International Trade and Gravity Models

1. The three-day course in Gravity Modelling will run from 18-20 September. Its focus will be on introducing the theoretical background of the gravity equation and its main applications for economic policy, as well as addressing the actual challenges in terms of computation and estimation of the gravity equation in the context of international trade.
2. On day three (20 September), the trade school will consist of three separate two-hour sessions on topics that will expand on issues related to international trade flows beyond the standard gravity equation approach. These include the impacts of income on international trade flows and main features of North-North trade versus North-South trade; the economics of Brexit, both from a short-run and long-run perspective; and economic warfare in a context of trade negotiations between symmetric and asymmetric trade partners.

The summer school on International Trade and Gravity Models is suitable for PhD students and advanced masters students with a focus on international trade. It is also suitable to practitioners and policy makers working on international trade, with especial interest in applications of gravity models and in deepening their understanding of the determinants of trade flows.

Online delivery method:

• The course will be conducted using the Zoom platform.
• The university and the lecturers are used to do online teaching and have state-of-the-art systems to do so and are able to deliver highly interactive experiences. We will limit the number of participants in the course and have additional lecturers per room to ensure a highly interactive experience. Though we will do our best to record all sessions, we are expecting participants to attend them live to enable interactions between participants and lectures. Any and all questions are welcome.
• There will be opportunities to discuss the projects and research ideas of the participants. This will occur both informally, during the virtual coffee breaks and virtual socials, as well as formally during the conference. After the summer school, lecturers will be available to answer questions and discuss the projects of the participants.
• Participants will be sent computer codes, lecture notes, and slides ahead of time. Participants will also receive direct assistance before the summer school starts in order to set up all the systems ahead of the online events.
• The summer school covers the theoretical aspects of the techniques. In addition, the summer school is very hands-on and participants will have carefully implemented exercises where they need to modify parts of the codes. This will be done in the lectures, both in groups and with the help of the instructors. The participants will receive solutions to all exercises and will be provided with computer codes that may then use in their own research.
• Please note that all participants need to have their own copy of Matlab since they will be using their own computers. Trial versions are available for free and the following links should be useful to check: https://www.mathworks.com/campaigns/products/trials.html , https://www.mathworks.com/products/matlab.html
• Please note that all participants need to have their own copy of Stata (https://www.stata-uk.com/software/stata.html) for the course on International Trade and Gravity Models. There is a short-term license available for students which is worth checking: https://www.stata.com/customer-service/short-term-license/.