Theses

Bachelor Theses

Centralized Application Procedure

All students, who want to write their bachelor theses in economics and management, have to use the centralized application procedure, offered by the dean’s office. The procedure is usually taking place in the beginning of each year. More informations can be found on the faculty’s website.

After beeing allocated to our institute

If you have been assigned to our institute as part of the central application process, you can select a bachelor's thesis topic and set the registration date.

An overview of possible bachelor's thesis topics can be found below. All bachelor's theses at the institute are empirical. The empirical bachelor's theses are based on simple applied scientific work on monetary policy topics and include, for example, a correlation analysis or a simple regression analysis.

For students who have not yet conducted empirical work or who would like to refresh their R skills, the institute offers an “Introduction to R” session (in English) once per semester.

Next "Introduction to R" session

29 April 2026, 9:15–10:45 a.m., in Room I-342

Recommendation: A personal laptop with R and RStudio (both freely available) installed

For a broader introduction to empirical work, we also recommend attending the “Programming for Finance” course at the Institute of Finance and Commodity Markets before commencing work on an empirical bachelor’s thesis. In this course, you can familiarize yourself with initial data work and the R software. Furthermore, we strongly recommend taking a seminar at the Institute of Money and International Finance before starting your bachelor’s thesis.

The seminars enable students to:

• become familiar with potential topics in the field of Money and International Finance and the relevant academic literature,

• practice academic writing as it is practiced at the Institute of Money and International Finance.

Please note that you may take only one seminar in the Bachelor’s program in Economics at our institute. The second seminar must be completed at another institute.

To register for your bachelor's thesis (topic selection and registration time), please use the contact form below and send it at least 14 days before the deadline of your work begin. Here you can enter two topic preferences. We will contact you with enough distance to your official registration date with the official registration.

When you have completed your work, please send it in digital form to sekretariat@gif.uni-hannover.de and submit a double-sided, single-stapled paper version of the work to us. You can either hand this in on Wednesdays at the institute or at any time to the Conti Campus gatekeeper and ask that you put it in the mailbox of Prof Dräger/Institute for Monetary and International Finance.

Possible registration points for your bachelor thesis

Summer Term

March 1st, April 15th and June 1st

Winter Term

September 1st, October 15th and November 1st

Topics regarding International financial markets

Private debt and real economic demand

Jauch, S.; Watzka, S. (2012): The Effect of Household Debt on Aggregate Demand - The Case of Spain. CESifo Working Paper No: 3924, Link.

Data: Eurostat, IMF, BIS
Credit growth and international capital flows

Lane, P.; McQuade, P. (2014): Domestic Credit Growth and International Capital Flows. Scandinavian Journal of Economics 116(1), 218-252, Link.

Data: IMF, BIS
Current account balances and financial flows in the Eurozone

Hobza, A., Zeugner, S. (2014): Current accounts and financial flows in the euro area. Journal of International Money and Finance 48, 291-313, Link.

Data: Link
Global current account imbalances and the financial crisis

Borio, C., Disyatat, P. (2011): Global imbalances and the financial crisis: Link or no link? BIS Working Paper No 346, Link.

Data: IMF, BIS
The foreign economic prosperity of nations

Lane, P; Milesi-Ferretti, G. (2018): The External Wealth of Nations Revisited: International Financial Integration in the Aftermath of the Global Financial Crisis. IMF Economic Review, 66(1), 189-222, Link.

Data: Link

Topics regarding macroeconomic expectations

How do macroeconomic expectations of households vary according to socioeconomic criteria?

Das, S., Kuhnen, C. M., und Nagel, S. (2020): Socioeconomic Status and Macroeconomic Expectations. The Review of Financial Studies, 33(1), 395–432, Link.

D’Acunto, F., Malmendier, U. und Weber, M., 2022. What do the data tell us about inflation expectations? NBER Working Paper No. 29825, Link.

Data: University of Michigan Survey of Consumers, ECB Consumer Expectations Survey, NYFed Survey of Consumer Expectations
Inflation expectations of households and willingness to consume

Bachmann, Rüdiger, Tim O. Berg, and Eric R. Sims (2015): Inflation Expectations and Readiness to Spend: Cross-Sectional Evidence. American Economic Journal: Economic Policy 7(1), 1–35, Link.

Dräger, L. und Nghiem, G. (2021): Are Consumers‘ Spending Decisions in Line with a Euler Equation? The Review of Economics and Statistics, 103 (3), 580–596, Link.

Data: University of Michigan Survey of Consumers, ECB Consumer Expectations Survey, NYFed Survey of Consumer Expectations
What influence does monetary policy news have on macroeconomic expectations?

Sheen, J. und Wang, B. (2023): Do monetary condition news at the zero lower bound influence households’ expectations and readiness to spend? European Economic Review, 152, 104345, Link.

Data: University of Michigan Survey of Consumers
Macroeconomic expectations of professional forecasters in the business cycle

Oinonen, S., und Paloviita, M. (2017): How Informative are Aggregated Inflation Expectations? Evidence from the ECB Survey of Professional Forecasters. Journal of Business Cycle Research, 13, 139–163, Link.

Data: ECB Survey of Professional Forecasters, US Survey of Professional Forecasters (Philadelphia Fed)
The role of uncertainty on macroeconomic expectations among households

Coibion, O.; Georgarakos, D., Gorodnichenko, Y., Kenny, G. and Weber, M. (2024): The Effect of Macroeconomic Uncertainty on Household Spending. American Economic Review, 114(3), 645-677, Link.

Dräger, L. und Lamla, M. (2016): Explaining Disagreement on Interest Rates in a Taylor-Rule Setting. The Scandinavian Journal of Economics, 119(4), 987-1009, Link.

Data: University of Michigan Survey of Consumers, ECB Consumer Expectations Survey, NYFed Survey of Consumer Expectations
Anchoring long-term inflation expectations

Gürkaynak, R., Levin A. und Swanson, E. (2010): Does inflation targeting anchor long-run inflation expectations? Evidence from long-term bond yields in the U.S., U.K. and Sweden. Journal of the European Economic Association, 8(6), 1208-1242, Link.

Kumar, S., Coibion, O., Afrouzi, H. und Gorodnichenko, Y. (2015): Inflation Targeting Does Not Anchor Inflation Expectations: Evidence from Firms in New Zealand. Brookings Papers on Economic Activity, Fall 2015, 151-208, Link.

Dräger, L. und Lamla, M. (2018): Is the Anchoring of Consumers’ Inflation Expectations Shaped by Experience? CESifo Working Paper No. 7042, Link.

Data: University of Michigan Survey of Consumers, NYFed Survey of Consumer Expectations, Federal Reserve Economic Database (FRED)

Topics regarding macroeconomic effects of monetary policy and financial crises

Inflation and income inequality

Albanesi, S. (2007): Inflation and inequality. Journal of Monetary Economics, 54(4), 1088-1114, Link.

Data: Deininger, K., Squire, L., 1996. A new data set measuring income inequality. World Bank Economic Review 10, 565–591 (Gini Koeffizient für Einkommensungleichheit) und OECD, World Bank, IMF (Inflation)
Do monetary policy shocks increase income inequality?

Coibion, O., Gorodnichenko, Y., Kueng, L. und Silvia, John (2017): Innocent Bystanders? Monetary policy and inequality. Journal of Monetary Economics, 88(C), 70-89, Link.

Data: Consumer Expenditure Survey (CEX), geldpolitische Schocks von Romer und Romer (2004), upgedated von Wieland und Yang (2020), Link.
Triple Debt Crises: Do banking, currency and sovereign debt crises often occur at the same time and how can triple debt crises be prevented?

(Kopie 21)

Reinhart, C. M. und Rogoff, K. S. (2011): From Financial Crash to Debt Crisis. American Economic Review, 101, 1676-1706, Link.

Reinhart, C. M. and Rogoff, K. S. (2009): This Time is Different – Eight Centuries of Financial Folly, Princeton University Press, Link.

Daten: Link

Registrate for the topic of your bachelor thesis

Master Theses

Topics for your master thesis are not offered in advance, but have to be suggested by the students and developed in cooperation with Prof. Dr. Dräger or the employees of the institute.

If you want to write your master thesis at the Institute of Money and International Finance, please send a short E-Mail to Prof. Dr. Dräger, which includes your prefered starting date and topic suggestion. Alternatively, you can visit the office hour as well.

Please note that writing a master’s thesis at our institute is only possible if you have chosen the Area Finance, Banking, and Insurance as your major or minor area. Furthermore, successful completion of a master’s seminar and attendance of at least one of our institute’s master’s lectures are prerequisites.