PhD Courses in Denmark

How can you design a study that allows you to make credible causal claims, when randomized experiments are not feasible? How can you address concerns about endogeneity or flawed research design raised by reviewers and colleagues? This PhD course equips students with the tools and strategies to tackle these questions, focusing on the challenges of causal inference in management research. Grounded in counterfactual thinking, the course introduces a range of tools designed to uncover causal relationships, focusing on observational and quasi-experimental methods.

Course objectives:

• Understand key concepts of causality, threats to causal inference and strategies to address them in management research.
• Learn about important techniques used in management research to address challenges of casual inference and handle endogeneity issues, such as fixed-effects models, instrumental variables, matching and difference-in-differences.
• Learn how to apply some of these techniques using data from published articles.
• Critically review scientific papers to assess the validity of causal claims and strengths and weaknesses of the chosen methods.

The course progresses from understanding the core principles of causality (day 1) to exploring tools and techniques for addressing specific challenges in causal inference (days 2–5). Throughout the course, an emphasis is placed on understanding the intuition behind these techniques, seeing them applied in published empirical articles, and replicating them using software packages.

The course is designed to help students critically assess causal claims, identify appropriate techniques given the available data, and contribute effectively to academic discourse in management research.

For more information, please see the link on the right-hand side of the page.