ISEG Summer School 2026

Instructor: Pierre-Philippe Combes, CNRS (Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique), France

Pierre-Philippe Combes is CNRS professor at the department of economics at Sciences Po and CEPR research fellow. His research focuses on the determinants of spatial disparities, in terms of productivity and income but also cost of living. With co-authors, he’s currently developing a programme on urbanisation over time, since the 18th c. Most of his papers regard the French economy but a recent series focuses on China and another one on urbanisation in Africa. He publishes in general audience journals such as Econometrica, the Journal of Political Economy, the Review of Economic studies, the European Economic Review, or the Journal of the European Economic association, in many top field journals in urban and regional economics and in other fields (Journal of International Economics, Journal of Labor Economics, Journal of Development Economics). He is one of the co-editors of the Journal of Urban Economics, and a member of the editorial boards of Regional Science and Urban Economics, and the Journal of Economic Geography.

Date: 7 – 10 july 2026

Room: Auditorium 4 Q6

Course Description:

Land-use and urbanization in historical France, 1760-2020.	– Machine learning to extract land use information from historical maps – Land use changes in France 1860-2020 – Urbanization in France 1760-2020 – If time allows: Urbanization in emerging countries and/or Machine learning for other historical spatial archives
The estimation of agglomeration gains from individual panel data and wage equations	– Theoretical background – Sorting and gains from density – Dynamic and heterogenous effects – If time allows: Matching in cities
Cost of living and real income gains	– Land and housing prices variation within and between cities – Real income spatial disparities – Quality of life – If time allows: Love of diversity and local price indexes
Urban divergence: Theory and estimation	– A model of endogenous cities – Estimating parameters – Counterfactual scenarios for limiting urban expansion

Instructor: Prof. Christina Gathmann, Director of Labor Market Department at the Luxembourg Institute of Socio-Economic Research (LISER), Luxembourg

Christina Gathmann is the director of the Labor Market Department at the Luxembourg Institute of Socio-Economic Research and a Professor of Economics at the University of Luxembourg. She is also affiliated with the CEPR, CESifo, CEPII, IAB, IZA and ZEW. She obtained her Ph.D. from the University of Chicago and has held positions at Stanford University, the Hoover Institution, University of Mannheim and Heidelberg University. Her research interests are in labor economics, skills and technology, migration and policy evaluation.

Date: 7 – 10 july 2026

Room: Auditorium 4 Q6

Course Description: The course provides an overview of core topics and concepts to understand modern labor markets. It uses theoretical models to inform empirical analysis and policy; and stresses the links between theoretical and careful empirical research. We will also discuss empirical studies on labor market topics that use state-of-the-art methods to identify causal effects. A key goal is to discuss the current research frontier and enable students to develop research ideas and implement their own research projects.

Neoclassical Labor Demand	– We start from the application of producer theory to labor markets and in particular relative factor demands. We will also look at some applications of the organizing framework in areas like migration or the impact of technological change.
Monopsony and Minimum Wages	– The impact of imperfect competition on employment and wages, and how to estimate those empirically. We then analyze the impact of minimum wages in markets with and without perfect competition.
Labor Supply	– Core models of labor supply, the impact of income and the role of opportunity costs for female labor supply.
Human Capital and Skill Investment	– An overview of how technological change affects the demand for skills, wages and wage differentials. Canonical framework inspired by Tinbergen. To what extent can supply shifts explain changes in wage differentials? What role does skill demand play?
Technological Change and Tasks	– Task-based framework and some of its predictions and applications.
Wage Inequality	– Stylized facts about wage and earnings inequality and the factors increasing or decreasing wage inequality.
Inequality and Intergenerational Mobility	– Inequality in incomes and in particular top incomes. Measurement and data on top incomes. What are important influences on the top income share? Intergenerational inequality, the Becker-Tomes model and empirical studies on intergenerational mobility
Local Labor Markets	– Rosen-Roback model of local labor markets. Empirical predictions and applications of the basic model on sorting and spillovers across local labor markets.
Trade and Local Labor Markets	– Trade and labor markets; how does trade (and comparative advantage) affect production, employment and wages in local labor markets. Empirical applications: China Syndrome, European evidence
Gender Differences	– Gender gaps and their underlying sources. Importance of labor supply, career choices, norms and bargaining.
Careers within the Firm (Personnel Economics)
Peer Effects in the Workplace	– Externalities in production and social environments; human capital spillovers and evidence.
Workshop on How to Write Referee Reports and Research Papers

Instructor: Prof. Benjamin Arold, University of Cambridge, England

Date: 20 – 23 july 2026

Room: Auditorium 4 Q6

Course Description: Much of human knowledge is stored in unstructured formats, in particular in written text. This course teaches methods to process and analyze text data. The learning goals are to understand the structure and concept text-as-data methods, and to evaluate the use of text-analysis tools in economics research. The course will conclude with an overview of non-standard data beyond text, in particular audio data and image data. The course covers 10 topics, see below. For most topics, a theoretical lecture will be provided first, followed by a discussion of a recent research paper in economics/NLP. The 10 topics are ordered as follows:

Overview

Dictionaries

Tokenization & Distance

Unsupervised and Supervised ML with Text

Word Embeddings and Linguistic Parsing

Embedding Sequences with Attention

Generative AI; and Using Transformers for YOUR Research

Image Data in Business & Economics

Audio Data in Business & Economics

Ethical Considerations

Instructor: Prof. James Fenske, University of Warwick, England

Date: 27 – 30 july 2026

Room: Auditorium 4 Q6

Course Description:

A crash course in economic history	– The Great Divergence – The Industrial Revolution – The Great Depression – Colonial Persistence – Reading & Discussion: Collective reading of Meissner’s One from the Many: The Global Economy Since 1850, followed by a three-hour discussion guided by questions prepared by James.
The part where we try to read as many recent top 5s as possible	– Recent Research Presentation: James will select four papers recently published in “Top 5” economics journals and present them to the class. – Student-Led Paper Discussion: Students will select four papers that are currently “revise and resubmit” or forthcoming in “Top 5” economics journals, and we will discuss them based on questions prepared by James.