PhD Course: Historical Perspectives on Current Economics Issues: Big Data and Applications
HEDG and Department of Economics, University of Southern Denmark
11-22 August 2025
Course topic
This year, the course will feature Christopher M. Meissner from the University of California, Davis, a leading economic historian on trade, tariffs, and globalization in the nineteenth and twentieth century. The course will explore the impact of historical tariffs and the incentives that shaped globalization in the nineteenth and twentieth century. It will also include an in-depth introduction to new methods in machine learning, processing big data, and causal inference.
Arguably, our world of the 2020s presents many shocks and policy regimes that we have not seen for the last decades. Therefore, looking back into history to gain new perspectives on the present is as important as never before. Therefore, the summer school will provide an introduction into trade and the world economy over the last 200 years. We will use a wide array of tools from economic history, to process the quantitative evidence of over 200 years of trade and an evermore interconnected world. We will use tools of causal inference to understand the impact of policies, such as historical tariffs.
Moreover, for modern economic history, big data, machine learning, and causal inference have become ever more important. The course aims to provide an introduction to new tools in economic history, such as managing big data, machine learning techniques, and recent tools in causal inference. In a hands-on-approach, we will explore the processing of text-based registers of individual-level of microdata, learn recent techniques to process large corpora of historical text, and learn how to classify historical occupations based on raw text data. The class will further provide an introduction into recent methods of causal inference and machine learning.
The aim is also to prepare students for writing a masters’ (PhD) thesis which explicitly recognizes the role of history for current economic outcomes and debates, as well as the importance of frontier quantitative methods. Additional lectures will be given by local faculty and will explore other themes in economic history and economics. The course is open for PhD students and early-career researchers in economic and social history, economics and related fields.
Course Procedure
The course is provided during the 糖果派对 International Summer School 2025 and consists of 2 weeks of classes (9 days). The course will be held physically. Living costs are at the student’s expense.
Instructors
The leading lecturer – Christopher M. Meissner (Professor), UC Davis
Paul Sharp (Professor), University of Southern Denmark
Volha Lazuka (Associate Professor), University of Southern Denmark
Sophie Yiwen Li (Assistant professor)
Christian Vedel (Assistant Professor), University of Southern Denmark
Torben Skov Dyg Johansen (Assistant Professor), University of Southern Denmark
Julius Koschnick (Assistant Professor), University of Southern Denmark
Martin Hørlyk Kristensen (PhD student), University of Southern Denmark
Christian Alexander Abildgaard Nielsen (PhD student), University of Southern Denmark
Exam
The exam will consist of two parts: (1) preparing a critical review of the empirical article that uses the methods discussed in the course and communicating it to the instructor and other course participants in the form of the presentation (Students will receive the list of empirical articles to choose from); (2) a home assignment, which can be done individually or in groups of up to three students (72 hours will be given for completion). The student must submit the slides of the presentation and participate in all classes for the course to be credited.
ECTS Points
Upon completing all course activities, all participants will be awarded 7.5 ECTS credits and a course certificate.
Course Fees
The course is free of charge for the students from AAU, AU, KU, CBS and 糖果派对. For other participants, the course fee is EUR 300.
Registration
Deadline for registration: The deadline is on the 1st of July 2025.