The following guidelines provide some information for writing a master's thesis with Prof. Conny Wunsch:

Typically, Prof. Wunsch does not provide topics. Students are requested to find a subject they are interested in and that motivates them to work on it for several weeks. Prof. Wunsch will help in finding a concrete topic that is suitable for a master's thesis based on the question(s) the student is interested in. Prof. Wunsch accepts topics in the field of Labour Economics which can be defined broadly including intersections with Educational Economics, Health Economics and Development Economics.

Pure literature reviews are not accepted for a master's thesis. Students must make a sufficiently large independent contribution, e.g. by conducting their own empirical analysis, by extending a theory, or by combining existing theories in a novel way. So far, most students wrote an empirical master's thesis that analyzed existing and easy-to-access data such as the Swiss Labour Force Survey or the German Socioeconomic Panel. Prof. Wunsch will help in finding suitable data sets as well as with getting access to the data.

Some weeks before the planned beginning of the master's thesis, students should get in touch with Prof. Wunsch with a concrete suggestion of a topic that includes research question, motivation and a rough idea regarding the planned approach. Prof. Wunsch will discuss the proposal with the student in a meeting during which the concrete topic of the master's thesis as well as the methodological approach will be worked out. During the process of writing the master's thesis Prof. Wunsch is available for feedback and advice on request.

Here you find detailed guidelines for empirical master's theses. This also contains a list of all master's theses which have been supervised by Prof. Wunsch at the University of Basel.