Sebastian Buhai’s Teaching in Economics

Teaching Philosophy

I view research and teaching as inseparable parts of the same activity. Scientific inquiry and university‑level education reinforce one another: good teaching exposes students to live questions and methods, and good research benefits from the discipline of explaining ideas clearly to others. This perspective goes back at least to Wilhelm von Humboldt’s classic essay On the Internal and External Organization of the Higher Scientific Institutions in Berlin:

“Science cannot be truly lectured on as science without again conceiving of it as self-actuating each time, and it would be incomprehensible if people did not in fact in the process often come upon discoveries. Moreover, university teaching is not such an arduous business that it should be regarded as interruption of the leisure for study rather than an aid to the same.” — Wilhelm von Humboldt (1810)

At the same time, effective teaching has to meet students where they are. Modern university teaching should adapt to the preferences and constraints of contemporary students, and make intelligent use of new pedagogical tools, without diluting analytical rigor or lowering expectations. Herbert Simon captured this balance succinctly in Models of My Life:

“Teaching is not entertainment, but it is unlikely to be successful unless it is entertaining (the more respectable word would be interesting).” — Herbert Simon (1991)

In that spirit, I aim for classes that are analytically demanding, empirically grounded and genuinely engaging: students work with real data and real papers, learn tools they can use in their own research or careers, and see how economic reasoning connects to live policy and business questions. A fuller discussion of my teaching philosophy, experience and future pedagogical plans is available in my detailed teaching statement.

Teaching Background and Interests

I hold formal qualifications for university-level teaching from both the Netherlands and France, and have taught at undergraduate and graduate levels in Denmark, Romania, and Sweden. My experience ranges from small, research-intensive seminars to large lecture courses, delivered in economics departments, business schools, and interdisciplinary research institutes.

My main teaching and supervision interests mirror my research agenda and include:

• (Micro)econometrics (theory, methodology, and applications), including standalone modules on structural econometric modelling, causal inference and program evaluation, statistics for econometrics, duration analysis, and research methods for economists and other social scientists.
• Labor economics, from both micro and macro perspectives, with potential standalone courses on personnel economics, internal and external labor markets, search and matching, and the economics of education.
• (Empirical) industrial organization, including demand and production estimation, market power and competition, empirical auctions, and the analysis of dynamic oligopoly.
• Economics of strategy, which can also be taught with a strategic management emphasis.
  
• Applied microeconomics, covering core topics as well as specialized modules on real-options applications in IO, labor, and environmental economics, or on optimal transport theory methods in economics/ econometrics, etc.
  

Teaching Experience

(Reverse chronological order)

• “Publishing meaningful scientific research in Economics (and related Social Sciences)”, Babeș‑Bolyai University (STAR‑UBB Institute and CFCIDFR), Cluj‑Napoca, November 2017; course synopsis (including detailed recommended reading).
  • Graduate mini‑course, around 40 participants (mainly PhD students and postdocs from economics and other social sciences), delivered as two intensive three‑hour sessions.
  • Focus on how to produce and disseminate rigorous and relevant research in economics from an international, mainstream perspective.
  • Covered practical aspects of academic reading, writing, presenting, publishing, and interacting with the wider society, supported by a detailed syllabus and recommended readings.

•  “Introduction to Structural Econometric Modeling”, Örebro University, Sweden, September 2017
  • Guest lectures within the course Economics Research and Communication, upper‑undergraduate level, around 35 students (including Erasmus exchange students).
  • Provided an overview of the debate between structural and atheoretical approaches in applied microeconometrics, basic principles of constructing and evaluating structural models, and a light introduction to structural demand estimation in empirical IO. See short list of  recommended further reading.

• “Topics in Empirical Industrial Organization”, Babeș‑Bolyai University, Cluj‑Napoca, July 2017; online mini-course description, including recommended literature 
  • Intensive graduate and continuing‑education mini‑course, associated with ERMAS 2017 (keynotes: Eric Maskin, Ariel Pakes, Aureo de Paula, Victor Ríos‑Rull). Around 40 participants, including PhD students, faculty from several Romanian universities, and staff from the Romanian Competition Council.
  • Offered an overview of state‑of‑the‑art econometric tools for analysing market outcomes, with emphasis on demand system estimation, production function estimation, and a bird’s‑eye view of empirical dynamic oligopoly models.

• “Industrial Economics” (co-taught), Aarhus School of Business, Aarhus University, Fall 2008 and Fall 2009; renamed “Advanced Industrial Economics” at Aarhus more recently
  • Large master‑level course, around 250 students. Twenty‑seven lectures over seven weeks, typically four lectures per week, plus a three‑hour written exam; 5 ECTS.
  • Aimed to familiarise students with models of competition, determinants of market structure, conditions for collusion, and the role of competition policy, and to provide tools to understand how competition intensity affects prices, quantities, quality, efficiency, welfare, market structure, and collusion possibilities.
  • In my share of the course I covered entry deterrence and accommodation, product differentiation, market concentration and market power, price collusion, demand system estimation, and production function estimation.

• “Economics of Strategy” (co-taught), Aarhus School of Business, Aarhus University, Fall 2008 and Spring 2010
  • Master‑level course with around 150 students. Twenty‑seven lectures over seven weeks, four lectures per week, plus a three‑hour written exam; 5 ECTS.
  • Focused on how firms design organisations to achieve strategic goals, including firm boundaries, outsourcing and offshoring, crowdsourcing, incentive design, and the relation between firm structure and strategy.
  • My lectures covered agency, ownership and control, horizontal and vertical boundaries of the firm, incomplete contracts and the property‑rights approach, relational contracts, and corporate hierarchy and culture.

• “Descriptive Economics”, Aarhus School of Business, Aarhus University, Fall 2008 to Spring 2009
  • Bachelor‑level course centred on empirical seminar papers. I supervised small groups of students in writing, presenting, and discussing individual term‑length papers.
  • The course combined introductory lectures, optional one‑to‑one meetings in the autumn, and structured presentation and debate sessions in the spring (each paper with one presenter and two student discussants).
  • Students acquired basic econometric tools and applied them to topics in labour markets and education, learning to formulate questions, assemble data, and communicate empirical results.

For details on my teaching philosophy, training, and experience, see my detailed teaching statement!