Sebastian Buhai’s Teaching in Economics

Teaching Philosophy

I am a keen advocate of research-based teaching, holding the view that scientific inquiry and university-level education are indispensable pillars of true academe and mutually reinforcing components of an efficient academic enterprise. This perspective is eloquently captured by Wilhelm von Humboldt in his seminal 1810 treatise, 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.”

At the same time, I maintain that modern university teaching must evolve in response to the preferences and needs of contemporary students, embracing the latest pedagogical innovations without sacrificing either the depth or breadth of the knowledge conveyed. In this spirit, Herbert Simon’s wise observation from his Models of My Life remains as relevant as ever:

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

Dive into the full depth of my teaching philosophy and experience via my detailed teaching statement.

Teaching Background and Interests

I hold formal qualifications for higher-education teaching from The Netherlands and France. I have taught a variety of courses at undergraduate and graduate levels across Denmark, Romania, and Sweden. My teaching experience spans small seminars to large lectures, including both semester-long courses and intensive mini-courses. These have been delivered within economics departments, business schools, as well as multidisciplinary research institutes.

My main teaching—and student supervision—interests are related to my main research interests:

• (Micro)econometrics (Theory, Methodology, Applications; also including modules suitable for standalone courses, e.g., Structural Econometric Modeling, Causal Inference, Program Evaluation, Statistics for Econometrics, Duration Analysis, Research Methods—designed for  economists or social scientists broadly, etc.)
• Labor Economics (encompassing both micro and macro perspectives, and including components suitable for standalone courses, such as Personnel Economics, Internal & External Labor Markets, Search & Matching in Labor Markets, Econ. of Education, etc.)
• (Empirical) Industrial Organization (including components suitable for shorter, standalone courses, such as, e.g., Production Functions, Consumer Demand, Market Power and Competition, Empirical Auctions, etc.)
• Economics of Strategy (could also be offered with a strategic management emphasis)
  
• (Applied) Microeconomics (covering classical topics as well as specialized, standalone modules such as, e.g., Real Options applications—in IO, Labor, Environmental Econ, applications of Optimal Transport theory, etc.)
  

Teaching Experience

In inverse chronological order, with brief descriptions/ further information links where available:

• “Publishing meaningful scientific research in Economics (and related Social Sciences): A hands-on guidance for PhD students and researchers in Romania”, November 2017, mini-course organized by the Babes-Bolyai University (UBB) ’s Institute for Advanced Studies in Science and Technology (STAR-UBB Institute) and its Center for Continuing Education and Distance Learning (CFCIDFR), Cluj-Napoca, Romania; course synopsis (including detailed recommended reading).
  • Graduate level mini-course, approx. 40 participants (PhD or postdoc researchers from various sciences, especially, but not exclusively, from Social Sciences and Economics); organized as 2 intensive lectures x 3 hours each.
  • Aims:  hands-on-guidance on how to produce and disseminate what counts as meaningful scientific research in Economics from the current, mainstream, international perspective. While the lectures were primarily targeting scholars and doctoral/ master students in Economic Sciences from Romanian universities and research institutes, anybody interested in Social Sciences more generally could potentially benefit from the pragmatic discussion and tips on academic reading, writing, speaking, publishing, as well as interacting with the wider society.

•  “Introduction to Structural Econometric Modeling”, September 2017, invited guest lecturer within the course “Economics Research and Communication”, at Örebro University, Örebro, Sweden
  • Undergraduate level, with approx. 35 student participants (some part of the Erasmus exchange)
  • Aims and goals: overview of the debate/polemic between structural vs. atheoretical approaches in applied (micro)econometrics; construction/ evaluation of structural econometric models; (light) introduction to structural modeling of IO demand systems. See short list of  recommended further reading.

• “Topics in Empirical Industrial Organization”, July 2017: intensive crash/refresh mini-course, at the Faculty of Economics and Business Administration, Babes-Bolyai University, Cluj-Napoca, Romania; associated to the ERMAS 2017 conference (the conference keynote speakers were Eric Maskin, Ariel Pakes, Aureo de Paula, and Victor Rios-Rull); online mini-course description, including recommended literature 
  • Graduate/ continuing-education mini-course, with approx. 40 participants (including Economics PhD students and faculty from various Romanian universities, as well as practitioners from the Competition Council in Romania, etc.); organized as 2 intensive sessions of 3 hours
  • Aims and goals: overview of some of the state-of-the-art econometrics tools for analyzing industrial market outcomes; I covered the main methodological issues arising in the estimation of demand systems, the estimation of production functions, and I gave a bird’s-eye view on the empirical analysis of dynamic oligopoly games.

• “Industrial Economics” (co-taught), Fall 2008 + Fall 2009, at Department of Economics, Aarhus School of Business, Aarhus University; renamed “Advanced Industrial Economics” at Aarhus more recently
  • Large master level course, with approx. 250 master students; consisted of 27 formal lectures spread over 7 weeks, with 4 lectures (once 3)/ week (usually organized as 2 consecutive lectures, in each of 2 separate week days), and final 3-hour written exam as course assessment; course credits: 5 ECTS.
  • Aims and goals: Students expected to become familiar with the various models of competition, the determinants of market structure, the conditions that make collusion attractive/ feasible, and the role of competition policy. Inter alia, the course seeks to provide basic tools for understanding differences in the intensity of competition across industries, and its consequences on prices, quantities, quality choice, efficiency, welfare, market structure, and the possibilities of collusion.
  • Topics I taught: entry deterrence / accommodation; product differentiation; market concentration/ power; price collusion; demand system estimation; production function estimation; etc.

• “Economics of Strategy” (co-taught), Fall ‘08 + Spring 2010, at the Department of Economics, Aarhus School of Business, Aarhus University
  • Large master level course, with approx. 150 master students; consisted of 27 formal lectures spread over 7 weeks, with 4 (once 3) lectures/ week (usually organized as 2 consecutive lectures in each of 2 separate week days), plus a final 3h written exam as course assessment; course credits: 5 ECTS.
  • Aims and goals: Students expected to understand how a firm can build an organization to achieve strategic goals. Inter alia, this implies studying the boundaries of the firm, the development of newer trends such as outsourcing, offshoring, crowdsourcing, how firms can create incentives to motivate employees to work in their best interest, and how firm structure generally relates to firm strategy.
  • Topics I taught: agency, ownership and control; horizontal and vertical boundaries of the firm; incomplete contracts and the property right approach; relational contracts; corporate hierarchy and culture; etc.

• “Descriptive Economics”, Fall 2008 to Spring 2009, Aarhus School of Business, Aarhus University
  • Bachelor level course: instruction/ supervision of small groups of students in writing, presenting, and acting as discussants of their colleagues’ term-length individual ‘seminar’ papers. Organized as lectures, plus (optional) meetings with each student during Fall 2008; subsequent presentation/debate sessions (1 student presenter, and 2 “opponents”) of standard lecture time, in Spring 2009 (end March- May); course credits: 5 ECTS.
  • Aims and goals: Students expected to acquire introductory notions of basic Econometrics applied to specific topics within (in my case) “Labor Markets” and respectively “Education”, concretized through their writing/ presenting/ discussing of term-length descriptive empirical papers.

For an in-depth exploration of my pedagogical activities, philosophy, and experience, be sure to read my detailed Teaching Statement.