This is information for students who are interested in writing their Bachelor or Master thesis under my supervision. Thank you for considering me as your advisor.
There are a limited number of slots for supervision. Please send requests for supervision by email. When doing so, please, include the following (items 1 and 2 are mandatory, item 3 is voluntary):
- A topic that you wish to work on, and an extended paragraph that motivates the topic (why is what you wish to do interesting?). Please be specific.
- List the advanced courses in monetary economics, macroeconomics, banking, or econometrics that you have taken.
- Include your transcript, and — ideally — a CV.
If there is a slot for supervision, I will get in touch with you and we will schedule a meeting. During the meeting, based on the information that you have provided, we will discuss and find a suitably refined topic for the thesis.
Why choose your own topic?
You will spend considerable time on writing your thesis. The time will be best spent if you choose a topic that you are genuinely interested in and use the time to learn what you wish to learn.
As per the topic, I generally ask students prior to the first meeting to write down what the economic question is that they would like to work on. Write an extended paragraph or at most a page that motivates what you wish to do.
As to what you wish to learn in terms of techniques, there are many different ways to write a thesis. And which way you choose may not be independent of your career plans going forward (business or apply for a PhD program?). You may dive deep into the literature and write a review. You may do your own econometric analysis. You may build a dynamic stochastic general equilibrium model and do policy simulations. Depending on what you do, some of the techniques you would need to teach yourself. Think about what you wish to learn… And mention it in the email.
Please be aware that most of the theses that I supervise are related to my own research interests (check this homepage). If these interests are not a good fit with your interests, please, bear in mind that we have a diverse macro group at Bonn: https://www.mee.uni-bonn.de/
Courses taken, transcript, and vita
Please make a comprehensive list of the course-work that you consider relevant for the project that you have in mind. Note that this will help find a topic for the thesis that fits your expertise. The same goes for including the transcript and a CV.