Due to a sabbatical, there will be no bachelor and master thesis supervisions by Prof. Dr. Rockenbach in the summer term 2024
Writing a Final Thesis
We offer the opportunity to write Bachelor or Master theses.
Pre-Requisites
Master
For a Master thesis, we require that you have already acquired 50 ECTS in your Master studies and have successfully completed at least one course at our chair. If you want to work experimentally, we require that you have successfully completed the module Experimental Methods. Ideally, you should also have taken the modules Game Theory and Behavioral Economics or a seminar in the specialization field “Design and Behavior” and should ideally have chosen “Design and Behavior” as one of your specialization fields in the M.Sc. program.
Bachelor
For a Bachelor thesis, you must have already acquired at least 100 ECTS in your Bachelor studies (see also https://wiso.uni-koeln.de/de/fakultaet/dekanat/pruefungsaemter/po-2015-po-2021/abschlussarbeiten). Further, we require that you have successfully completed at least one course at our chair.
Procedures
All
If you are interested in writing a thesis at our chair, please hand in your application to office-behavecon
wiso.uni-koeln.de. There are two application dates per year and your application will automatically be considered for the next-closest date:
- 15. March
- 15. September
[Please note that in the WS 23/24 we will have strongy reduced capacitites for the supervision of theses, because of changes of employees in our team. Please consider looking for alternative supervision possibilities for the upcoming semester.]
Important: Please note that the capacities of our chair are limited. Therefore, we cannot guarantee the success of your application!
Master
In your application, please include your current grade transcript, your CV and a short proposal of one page as one PDF file. In your proposal, you should briefly present an idea for a topic or research question you would like to work on in your Master thesis. This can still be fairly rough, but should indicate your interest and motivation for the topic and include a few papers on the topic that you consider important. If you already have a concrete idea for a research design, you can describe it, but this not a requirement. You should at least briefly sketch out the way you would ideally like to answer your research question, i.e. the methods (e.g. empirically, experimentally, theoretically). In case you would like to work experimentally/empirically, you can also go into more detail on what kind of data you would ideally like to collect. You can also name one other area/topic you are also potentially interested in - this is however optional and not a requirement. In case of a successful application, you will develop the specific question/topic for your Master thesis together with your supervisor. We will get back to you about one week after the application deadline.
Bachelor
In your application, please include your current grade transcript, your CV and a short proposal of one page as one PDF file. In your proposal, you should briefly present an idea for a topic or research question you would like to work on in your Bachelor thesis. This can still be fairly rough, but should indicate your interest and motivation for the topic and include a few papers on the topic that you consider important. You can also name one other area/topic you are also potentially interested in - this is however optional and not a requirement. In case of a successful application, you will develop the specific question/topic for your Bachelor thesis together with your supervisor. We will get back to you about one week after the application deadline.
The Thesis
All
Generally, your final thesis should prove your ability to work on a research question independently and with scientific rigor. Further, we encourage you to write your theses in a concise way, i.e., in the form of a scientific paper. This applies especially to Master theses. Papers are usually shorter than classical theses and focus on the research question as specifically as possible. To ensure effective supervision, the topic should be related to the field of Behavioral Economics. For more information, you can find below the research interests of the chair members who supervise theses, as well as topics of final theses supervised in recent years.
You can write your thesis either in English or in German, though we strongly encourage you to write it in English as in all likelihood the vast majority of the literature relevant to your topic will be in English anyway. You can find further information on how to structure and write a scientific paper below.
[Paper Guidelines]
Master
Theses can be theoretical or empirical. In both cases we expect there to be some original contribution from you, rather than just a summary of the existing literature. This can be in the form of a re-analysis of an existing data set, an extension of an existing theoretical model, applying a theoretical model to a new question, etc. Our chair also provides the possibility to collect data yourself by running an experiment with the subject pool of the Cologne Laboratory for Economic Research or an online platform like Prolific, Cloudreserach or Amazon MTurk. Typically, our chair provides a buget for an experiment with 100-150 subjects and a duration of 5-10 minutes for all master theses.
Bachelor
For your Bachelor thesis, you will most likely write a literature-based thesis and answer your research question on the basis of research papers. Alternatively, you can work empirically by analysing existing data sets. In exceptional cases, there is also the possibility to run a small experiment for a Bachelor thesis.
Finding a Topic
As you will spend many weeks working on your thesis, you should find a topic that is of great personal interest to you. Ideally, your research question is a question that you would like to know an answer to, but do not know the answer to yet. In general, we believe that there are two broad approaches to finding a topic that suits your interests:
1. You start with a behavior that you would like to understand. Maybe you have a personal relationship to the behavior, for example, because it relates to of one of your hobbies or to your professional experiences. The range of behaviors worth studying in behavioral economics is much broader than you may think: behavioral economists are, for example, working on family planning, addiction, gym visits or voting, among many other behaviors. Almost any behavior could be relevant for economist to study, not just the purchase of goods or investment decisions.
2. You look at what other people are working on at the moment and find a topic that is of interest to you. You could look at current working papers of professors you like, you could review the material of your economics courses, or you could check recently published papers in leading economics journals (https://ideas.repec.org/top/top.journals.all.html). Articles which summarize a strand of literature can also be a good starting point. These are typically published in the Journal of Economic Perspectives, Journal of Economic Literature or Annual Review of Economics.
Below you find what our team members are currently working on and also a list of topics of recently written theses.
Team Members Supervising Theses and their Research Interests
M.Sc. Lukas Reinhardt
- Social Cohesion
- Social Identity
- Political Preferences
- Cooperation and Conflict
- (Behavioral) Political Economy
M.Sc. Sören Harrs
- Preferences for Redistribution and Inequality
- Self-Image and Identity
- Social Norm Interventions
- Narratives and Belief Formation
Recent Theses
Why isn't she the boss? On the underrepresentation of women in leadership positions
Heterogeneity in Trust and Reciprocity: A cross-country analysis
Investment behavior in cryptocurrencies – an experimental study
The adverse effects of social image concerns on dishonesty – A theoretical analysis
Nudging Sustainable Behaviour: Experimental Analysis of Voluntary Carbon Offsets
How the consequences for others affect intrinsic honesty
Eyes on me: An Analysis of the Relationship between Observability and Cheating
The Effects of the Timing of Ranking Feedback on Dishonesty - Experimental Evidence
The role of hyperbolic discounting and other-regarding preferences in climate action
Analysis of the effort of employess in a new work environment - a real effort experiment
Incentivizing sustainable consumption decisions - A natural field experiment on reducing disposable cup usage
The Role of Local and National Identities for Pro-environmental Behavior - A Field Experiment in India
Mental Accounting in Sustainable Consumption Choices