Master's Thesis
A master's thesis (the reading and writing phase) lasts 5 months. The five months may start from July 15th to September 15th or from February 1st to March 15th.
Candidates should make up their mind on their desired topic in one of the areas
- Economics of Strategy
- Economic Analysis of Law
- Collective Decision Making
- Intellectual Property Rights
- Bargaining
and apply for the topic by writing an email 5 weeks before the desired starting date. The e-mail should include all the information requested below. Students' topic proposals are welcome.
General Information
The purpose of a thesis is to demonstrate your ability to apply economic concepts, i.e., using mathematical models. First, you have to outline the economic problem and the state of the literature. From this point, you can proceed in three ways: You discuss and criticize the models found in the literature, you modify a given model adequately, or you create your own (simple) model so as to address an aspect of the problem that has been neglected in the literature. In any case, the usage of economic models is inevitable. Empirical work that sustains or refutes the theoretical results is always welcome.
Successful participation in a course or seminar on "Advanced Business Economics" or "Topics in Economic Analysis of Law" is usually inevitable.
Please provide the following information (incomplete applications will not be processed):
- family name,
- given name,
- matr.-no.,
- OvGU email address (other email addresses will not be considered),
- study program,
- a current transcript of your grades at the OvGU (virus free file, preferably PDF format),
- prospective starting date of your thesis,
- a list which indicates your participation (with semester and grade) in any of the chairs' courses (Collective Decision-Making in Organizations; Economic Analysis of Law; Economics of International Business; Financial Management; Principles of Management) and/or seminars (Advanced Business Economics; IBE Project Seminar "Business Plan"; Topics in Economic Analysis of Law),
- your topic proposal (title, brief description of about 4-5 sentences) plus a complete list of the literature you have used and which you refer to.
We will then inform you whether you may come up with a more detailed research proposal, including some preliminary literature research. If so, please send in (within two weeks) your research proposal of maximum two pages. The proposal should contain ideas to the questions and aspects mentioned above, in the very first paragraph of this page. Please do NOT come up with a "concept" that is limited to "I find the topic very interesting, and it is a very important topic, and I have no idea yet what the keywords in the topic mean, but I want to learn everything about it while I write my thesis" (we’ve read that more than once). Put all the information into the body of your email, do not send attachments. If, in exceptional cases, it is inevitable to send an attachment, then assign a sensible filename, like "myname_grades.pdf". It is impossible to keep track of all the attachments cleverly named "thesis.doc" or "cv.pdf".
In an introductory session at the beginning of the semester we will explain to you the guidelines for academic writing and give some hints on doing academic research.
You have to present the line of your argumentation and your model in a mandatory thesis seminar about two months after your start/before your deadline (the exact date can be negotiated). As the deadline arrives, you are required to submit two copies of your thesis to the Examination Office in time; otherwise you fail. Moreover, you are requested to submit - directly to us - a CD or DVD containing all electronic results of your literature research, and a file of your thesis (PDF is preferred; DOC is also acceptable).