To identify an exact definition of an economist is a real struggle. Who is an economist actually? Is he or she a business consultant or perhaps an analyst? The CERGE-EI director, Sergey Slobodyan, opened the first lecture of the Talking Economics! series on Thursday with such questioning. “When you go buy a cup of coffee, such an event is considered an economic transaction. But is the person selling the coffee an economist?” he added.

Summarizing who you are, what you do and what you would like to do in the future usually turns out to be a bigger challenge than it looks. You’re applying to join our academic community and your statement should tell us what you understand about our institution and how you will fit in and contribute. This is the only part of the application package that you shape entirely yourself, where you can stress what you feel is important for us to consider or give additional information that is not evide

Machine learning is a specific subset of artificial intelligence that trains a machine to learn. It is based on the idea that systems can learn from data, identify patterns, and make decisions with minimal human intervention. We sat down with two students on the Master in Applied Economics program to talk about the topics they chose for their Machine Learning Techniques term projects: an anime movies recommender system and customer churn.

What makes one enroll in the Master in Applied Economics program when he/she already has a promising career in architecture and urbanism? Read an interview with Lukáš Makovský, our MAE graduate from 2018, who we sat down with to discuss professional life choices, his studies at CERGE-EI, working in Prague, and doing research in London at once, and a bit more.

Another round of the Talking Economics! series shifted attention to the Bangladeshi garment sector thanks to Andreas Menzel and Martina Miotto, whose field research projects using experiments complement one another. When you think of the textile industry and textile workers in any of the developing countries, what image do you have in mind? Sweat shops, the ill-treatment of factory workers, or long shifts with a small paycheck?

Späti is not your ordinary convenience store. On the contrary, they are an essential part of Berlin's neighborhood culture nowadays, with its history rooted in the communist era. Berlin, the city of contrasts and its vibrant urban never-dying appeal, attracts loads of tourists each year from around the globe. You might have already checked a lot of items off of your Berlin’s must-see list: stroll through the Brandenburg Gate, discover art at the East Side Gallery, remember at the Holocaust Memorial, join a techno party, to name a few. Though if you have never heard or come across the word späti, you might have missed a substantial cultural asset for the city’s identity.

Martin Kosík and Giorgi Chavchanidze are both first-year students in the Master Economic Research program at CERGE-EI and recipients of the First-Year Excellence Fellowship. Martin´s first experience with economic research was during his assistantship at CERGE-EI for “Volební lavička”, a project studying the information acquisition of voters in Czech municipal elections. Giorgi graduated from a double major in Mathematics and Economics at the American University in Bulgaria, both majors with hon

Whilst many of us have been staying at home these past few weeks, unable to grasp the influx of information from the Czech and foreign media, it has been the IDEA anti COVID-19 project run by the IDEA think tank that has helped to ease the tension with their explanatory studies on the issues related to the coronavirus outbreak. Many CERGE-EI faculty members, students, and alumni gathered in the blink of an eye to actively participate and contribute with their knowledge to launch the project...

The winner in the 2020 New Economic Talent competition, Georgiana Puscas, competed with a paper The winner takes more? Assessing the role of political alignment in transfers to Romanian municipalities, which she likewise submitted as her bachelor thesis. We were happy to discuss her paper in depth and ask some more questions about herself and her studies at Warwick.