Econometric Society DSE summer schools is an annual series of concentrated one week short courses paired with an associated two day conference in the general area of Dynamic Structural Econometrics (DSE).

While a broad array of topics falls under this rubric, the primary focus is on providing students with tools and “hands on” computational instruction to carry out research in applied microeconometrics with strong emphasis on closely integrating economic and econometric theory in empirical work.

The hosts, venues, and the topical themes of the conferences and summer schools will change over time to cater to a broad group of potential students, faculty, and research interests.

Core principles of DSE summer schools

  • the summer schools place a strong emphasis on computation to make structural approaches to econometrics more accessible to graduate students

  • the location and topical themes of the summer schools change from year to year, making these summer schools accessible to a wider group of students worldwide, and cater to a wider group of interests and applications:
    • machine learning
    • marketing and business analytics
    • finance
    • macroeconomics and DSGE models
    • behavioral economics
    • development
    • labor
    • IO and computational game theory
  • the summer schools are paired with a two day conference in order to expose students to leading researchers and state of the art research, and to enable conference presenters to serve as lecturers in the summer schools, which occur before and after each conference

Admission procedures

As we noted above, admission would be competitive and judged by an admissions committee that consists of the core DSE organizers Iskhakov, Rust and Schjerning, and largely overlaps with the program committee selected by the host of each DSE conference.

The organizers would provide an online submission system that enables the program/admission committee members to review applications to the summer school, and separately, submissions to the associated conference. The host of each summer school would have a good deal of latitude to set a limit on the number of students that can be admitted given the space constraints of the particular venue. The host can also choose committee members who can help select students with interests particularly well matched for the specific theme of each summer school.

The core organizers prefer to keep the DSE summer schools tuition free, or to charge only a modest tuition to cover local expenses such as breakfasts, coffee breaks and lunches in order to accommodate a concentrated lecture schedule without losing too much time to the logistics within the day. However, participants are typically expected to cover their travel and lodging expenses.

Advisory board

The Advisory board assists in selecting potential venues and topics for the DSE summer schools and conferences, and helps deal with any potential conflicts. Current members of DSE advisory board are

  • Jaap Abbring (Tilburg University)
  • Dennis Kristensen (UCL)
  • Aureo de Paula (UCL)
  • Michael Keane (UNSW)
  • Karl Schmedders (University of Zurich)
  • Whitney Newey (MIT)

Core organizers

  • John Rust (Georgetown University),
  • Bertel Schjerning (University of Copenhagen), and
  • Fedor Iskhakov (Australian National University)

Core organizers serve on an ongoing basis as the DSE managers and organizing committee. The principal job of the core organizers is to recruit hosts and venues, and coordinate the topics/themes for future DSE summer schools, as well as to facilitate fund raising and staffing. Moreover, Iskhakov, Rust and Schjerning are serving as the lecturers/instructors of the core DSE curriculum, while the other topics taught in the summer school vary along with the chosen themes.