Teaching
Applied Political Economy
Lecturer – ETH Zurich, Master level
Spring 2024, Spring 2025 (scheduled)
Applied Political Economy is a new course that I developed at ETH Zurich. A major focus is on engaging students with recent empirical research and enabling them to initiate their own research project in political economics.
About the course
The Applied Political Economy course teaches the fundamentals of political economy analysis with an emphasis on recent empirical research. In essence, we explore how economic thinking can be applied to study non-market relationships that are relevant to understanding important social, economic, environmental, and political outcomes. Course participants acquire knowledge of key concepts used to describe the behavior of individual political actors and groups as well as the incentives and institutions that shape their decisions. For example, we dive into topics such as politicians’ re-election strategies and political budget cycles, federalism and decentralization, the interaction of national politics and international organizations, and the underlying political-economic reasons for the difficulty of addressing environmental and economic problems in a globalized world.
Based on introductory book chapters and research papers, the lectures introduce general political economy approaches and theoretical concepts. Equipped with this conceptual foundation, we look at real-world examples and engage in discussions about empirical research that is aimed at identifying specific causal political-economic relationships. A major focus of the course is to expose course participants to recent empirical research. The aim is to help students navigate through contemporary empirical studies that apply a range of different research designs.
This course is as much about learning new concepts as it is about critically applying that knowledge to new situations that students are asked to identify independently. Course participants are expected to take an active part in class discussions and to engage with the material through reading and lecture preparation. Through this course, students should gain a basic understanding of how to formulate and empirically evaluate specific research questions. A key aim is that students should be able to develop and describe a plan for their own political economy analysis at the end of the course.
Course topics and outline of the 2024 edition:
- Introduction to Political Economy
- Methodological Fundamentals & Applications
- Market Orientation of Institutions
- Redistribution and Inequality
- Voters and Elections
- Politicians
- Bureaucracy
- Central Banks and Monetary Policy
- Federalism and Decentralisation
- Political Economy of the Environment
- Political Economy of Development & Disaster Aid
- Course Recap, Discussion & Writing Workshop
A detailed course syllabus is available on request.
*I taught the 2024 edition together with Jan-Egbert Sturm. My sessions are shown in bold.
Student feedback
“My top-3 learnings from this course:
1. the specific political cases around the world.
I have learned so much about different political systems in different countries, the way international aid works, and many other topics. Learning about the setting studied in each case has significantly broadened my general knowledge.
2. The econometrics applications.
Reading actual empirical research and seeing econometrics methods applied to real world data has also been very interesting and educational.
3. The research plan we’re writing.
Searching for a topic that really interests me required reading lots of literature and allowed me to dive into a topic that I have always wanted to learn more about. This assignment fits this course so well. We learn about so many different research topics and then we wrap up the course by diving into one that we’re personally really interested in. I have thoroughly enjoyed this course and this assignment. If there were a second part to this course, I would take it for sure.”
“Tolle Vorlesung!”
“I can only recommend the class to other students who are interested in contemporary political and economic developments and their implications.”
“I took the course mostly out of curiosity about the field, and it really delivered because I learned a lot of really new perspectives that I did not know much about.
For me, the most impactful or striking learnings came from the political economy and environment and federalism and decentralization topics. I enjoyed the discussions surrounding the spillover effects from environmental damage and the way that political actors play a role. In general, the political aspect really made the economics concepts (which can sometimes be a bit abstract) really tangible and the way that econometrics methods could be used with the right assumptions and robustness checks was completely novel and fascinating to me because they never felt like fields that could cross in my limited knowledge.”
Most important learnings according to the 2024 class:
- Interdisciplinarity with economic perspective
- Connections to environment, natural science, history
- Incentives matter!
- Crucial to understand institutional context
- Learning about different institutions in various countries
- How to approach research papers
- Identifying research question and contribution
- Key assumptions
- External validity and policy implications
- Evaluating relative importance of results for society
- Creativity needed for empirical research!
“Ich habe den Kurs als super strukturiert und konzepiert wahrgenommen und bin super gerne zu den Vorlesungsterminen gekommen. Ich habe die Themen als sehr spannend und verständlich aufbereitet wahrgenommen. Alles in allem war dieser Kurs eine große Bereicherung für mich, besonders außerhalb meines Studiums. Das folgende hängt sicher auch mit meiner persönlichen Studiensituation zusammen, dennoch ist der APE-Kurs der beste, den ich bisher in meinem Master belegt habe.”
- “Die Methodenblöcke waren sehr hilfreich, um neue Inhalte zu lernen und gelernte Inhalte aus anderen Vorlesungen zu wiederholen.
- Das Feedback zum Forschungsdesign war sehr ausführlich und hilfreich und hat konkret aufgezeigt, wie man daran weiterarbeiten kann.
- Die Vorlesungsfolien waren anschaulich und abwechslungsreich, haben die Unterrichtssitzungen sehr gut strukturiert.
- Die Assignments waren gut gewählt und haben viel Raum für eine eigene Schwerpunktsetzung gelassen.”
“I would lower the weights of the research proposal by adding one more quiz to test the basic knowledge, as the research proposal alone stand for so much.”
Teaching evaluation: results overview
Principles of Econometrics
Teaching assistant – ETH Zurich, undergraduate and Master level
Spring 2019, Spring 2020-2022 (online/hybrid), Spring 2023
Principles of Econometrics is an introductory class that teaches the fundamentals of applying econometric methods. The second part of the course puts an emphasis on the identification of causal effects, for which I developed new tutorials and education tools.
About the course
This course introduces the fundamentals of econometric analysis. It covers basic methods of simple and multiple regression analysis using cross-sectional, time-series, and panel data. An emphasis of the class is on hypothesis testing, interpretation of regression results, and understanding potential threats to the causal interpretation of relationships in the data. We also discuss the usage of contemporary inference techniques (such as difference-in-differences and instrumental variables) to recover causal relationships in the data.
The course targets both the theoretical understanding as well as the application of basic econometric methods to real world problems. The educational objective of this course is that, after completion, students should be able to:
- understand different forms of data (cross-sectional, panel, time-series) and their strengths and weaknesses for answering different research questions.
- understand how to translate questions about economic policy issues and human behaviour into research hypotheses that can be tested with data.
- apply their theoretical knowledge about econometrics to concrete examples based on the knowledge they acquired in tutorial sessions using the statistical software package Stata and interpret estimation results.
- name and identify potential threats for causal interpretations of relationships in the data and explain whether (and how) they can be addressed.
Student feedback
“I had the pleasure of taking the Principles of Econometrics course in 2023, where Stephan’s role as lecturer, tutor, and course coordinator greatly contributed to its success. Stephan’s passion for the subject matter was evident in his enthusiastic delivery and depth of knowledge. I highly appreciate meticulously organized course materials, which was definitely the case for this course. He also ensured that lecture slides were comprehensive and code files were annotated for clarity, which was very helpful in understanding the complex topics.
Additionally, Stephan was highly responsive in the course forum, providing timely announcements and detailed explanations to address any queries. The tutorials were particularly valuable, providing a supportive environment for discussing exercises, clarifying confusions and delving into complex topics. I appreciated Stephan’s proactive approach to student learning, demonstrated by his follow-up emails or forum posts after tutorials to really ensure comprehension of the materials by students.
Throughout the lectures, Stephan effectively expanded explanations with practical examples and code demonstrations. Overall, Stephan’s dedication to student success made the course a rewarding experience and one truly felt supported throughout the lecture, that may be a hard introductory course for many.”
“Having attended the Econometrics lecture and tutorial which was organized by Mr. Schneider enabled me to dive into the foundations and methodology of evidence-based research. The course was well structured and suitable to establish a profound understanding of also rather demanding topics.
Mr. Schneider, in particular, demonstrated great competency in answering questions during the tutorial sessions, showed a strong interest in the students’ learning progress and explained the contents in clear and illustrative manner. Overall, the course was very informative, useful, and interesting to attend to.”
Mathematics for Economists
Teaching assistant – Heidelberg University, undergraduate level
Winter 2013-2015
The class teaches essential mathematical concepts for economists.
Students Helping Students
Tutor in mathematics for students in the lower grades at high-school – Hollenberg-Gymnasium Waldbröl
2009-2012
What others say about this class
My top 3 learnings from the course include:
1) the specific political cases around the world. I have learned so much about different political systems in different countries, the way international aid works, and many other topics. Learning about the setting studied in each case has significantly broadened my general knowledge.
2) The econometrics applications. Reading actual empirical research and seeing econometrics methods applied to real world data has also been very interesting and educational.
3) The research plan we’re writing. Searching for a topic that really interests me required reading lots of literature and allowed me to dive into a topic that I have always wanted to learn more about. This assignment fits this course so well. We learn about so many different research topics and then we wrap up the course by diving into one that we’re personally really interested in. I have thoroughly enjoyed this course and this assignment. If there were a second part to this course, I would take it for sure.
