Theses & References
Basic Rules for Writing a Bachelor or Master’s Thesis at our Institute
- If you are interested in writing your Bachelor or Master’s thesis at our Institute, please apply in writing to j.brandt@wiwi.hu-berlin.de and include your academic record.
- You need to have participated in one seminar or lecture at our institute, where you demonstrated your academic skills in a seminar paper or exam. We expect a passing grade of 2.7 or better.
- In our research we place great emphasis on the quantitative analysis of economic history. Any empirical, statistical, and especially econometrical knowledge on your part is therefore particularly welcome.
- Once you have registered for a thesis, we ask you to participate in our thesis seminar ("Studienabschlussseminar"), where you will have the chance to present your topic.
- Your Bachelor or Master’s thesis will be supervised and evaluated by Prof. Wolf. One of our PhD students can provide additional supervision and guidance.
Usually, we suggest the topic of your thesis. We will, however, make exceptions if you provide a sound rationale for another topic.
Writing Guidelines for your Bachelor or Master’s Thesis
- Regarding structure and formal requirements, please read and follow the guidelines.
- Concerning the length of your thesis, we expect you write about 30 pages for a Bachelor thesis and about 50 pages for a Master’s thesis, in both cases excluding the appendix.
- With regard to citation and references, we ask you to follow a few rules:
- Please apply the in-text (=author-year) citation method.
- For an accurate example, see this article by Prof. Wolf.
- Or apply either of these two citation styles: Chicago or Harvard.
Regarding websites, please do not cite Wikipedia.org or similar unreliable sources. If you reference proper web sites, please include the date of access under references and the site content in printed form in the appendix of your paper.
For a lenghty but thorough guide see Writing Economics from Harvard University.
Basic Rules for Requesting a Reference from Prof. Wolf
- Please refer to the Guidelines for References (in German) at our Insitute.
