Bachelor’s Theses

Information on Bachelor’s Theses

• You can earn 15 ECTS for your Bachelor’s thesis. 3 of these ECTS are earned by presenting intermediate results of your thesis in our Statistics Seminar. The remaining 12 ECTS are earned by submitting the written thesis.
• The grade is determined by the final written thesis. The intermediate report is a non-graded program achievement.
• In the intermediate report you should demonstrate that you familiarized yourself with your chosen topic. That includes an overview of the relevant literature and first empirical results. At this point, your working progress should indicate positive prospects for your thesis project. The presentation is also meant to show that you work independently on your project.
• You can ask for topics at the chair or you can suggest a topic by your own.

Milestones

You can talk to us about a potential thesis topic at any time during the semester. We first agree on a working title for your project that you can use to make yourself familiar with the relevant literature, methods, and data. You would also refresh your knowledge about R. This initial period can parallel with your attendance of one of our elective courses. The length of this period is flexible and depends, for instance, on student’s effort.

At the end of the initial period there is an intermediate report about your project that you submit in the form of a presentation in our seminar (roughly 30 minutes). This is also when we agree on the final title of your thesis and officially notify the examination office about your thesis. (Alternatively, the presentation can be scheduled after the official registering of the thesis at the examination office.)

You then have 9 weeks to finish your thesis but good work during the initial phase might, of course, lead to a faster submission.

You have to hand in two copies of your thesis at the examination office. In addition you have to submit the electronic version of the thesis. For more information, please consult the examination regulations for our Bachelor program (especially §26).

After you submitted your thesis we will try to examine it quickly (within approximately 4 weeks).

Current Topic Suggestions from the Chair

The suggested topics are based on the knowledge gained in our bachelor’s-level courses “Analysis of Macroeconomic and Financial Markets Data” or “Economic Expectations and Forecasting Methods.”

All of the listed topics can be addressed by students in English or German, regardless of the language used in the project description provided here.

• Gender Differences in Inflation Expectations
  [Women tend to have higher inflation expectations, on average, relative to men. Based on data from an expectation survey among European private households, the Bachelor’s thesis will investigate which parts of the gender-specific distributions of inflation expectations drive this stylized fact. Furthermore, the analysis will investigate how the gender difference varies across countries and over time.]
• The impact of climate policy events on energy market returns
  [Major announcements and milestones—such as COP, REPowerEU, and TEN-E regulations—aim to reduce fossil fuel use and promote renewables. This study will analyze market reactions to these events, focusing on whether responses differ by event type or timing, such as initial announcements or international endorsements. An event study framework can be used to measure abnormal returns and to assess how long these events remain “newsworthy.”]
• The impact of technological innovation on renewable energy stock returns
  [Technological innovations can improve renewable energy efficiency, boosting investor confidence and stock returns. However, they can also render existing technologies obsolete, potentially causing short-term investor reluctance and lower returns. Given the rapid pace of development, the overall effect on stock returns is unclear. This study aims to investigate whether technological innovation is a net positive or negative factor for renewable energy stocks using linear regression analyses.]
• The nexus of renewable energy and the market for technological innovation
  [The renewable energy market is continuously driven by rapidly evolving technologies and the invention of more stable and efficient energy generation mechanisms. There is a strong interconnectedness between the renewable energy sector and technological innovation. The thesis will provide a comprehensive summary of the existing literature on this connection, including the methods used and the conclusions reached.]

Past Bachelor’s Thesis Topics

The following bachelor’s theses have been supervised by the chair since 2019. This list can help interested students get a sense of the types of topics that are suitable for a thesis at the Chair of Statistics and Econometrics.