She Teaches Economics in London

Svetlana Bryzgalova, HSE graduate in Nizhny Novgorod, is studying and working in the London School of Economics. In September she delivered several open lectures and workshops for the HSE students in Nizhny Novgorod.

– Could you, please tell us about your work in the London School of Economics, where you are studying and teaching at the postgraduate programme? Does the skill levels of the HSE students in Nizhny Novgorod and the LSE students differ?

– As the majority of PhD students, I teach undergraduate students, graduate students, and recent postgraduate students at the LSE. Almost all of my econometrics and finance courses were elective, so the students were prepared for hardworking, asked a lot of questions and tried their best to develop professional skills. It is difficult to compare the students of different countries, because the groups greatly vary each year. But I can tell for sure, that our students are highly competitive with the LSE students in technical skills.

– What qualities make a young student successful in future?

– I think, any student should realize that economics goes beyond the university. The principles and mechanisms of agent interaction that we study work in everyday situations. That is why a real economist must be an inquisitive person, who is always trying to get to the bottom of the problem.

Besides, nowadays so many interesting books in economics are published, many of them have already been translated in Russian. These books help think like economists, and it is almost impossible to distract one from reading them. ‘Freakonomics’, ‘Why Nations Fail’, ‘Lessons in Economics’, ‘Poor Economics’, ‘Thnking Fast and Slow’ – I know a lot of schoolchildren, who decided to major in economics after reading these books. That is why I would like to give students the second piece of advice: you should read as many good books as possible. And you shouldn’t be afraid to act right now. You should read quality articles in papers and magazines, analyze news, ask questions, and take part in research projects.

– On what topics did you deliver your workshops?

– I conducted a series of scientific workshops for fourth year undergraduate students, and for the first and second year graduate students on ‘Finance’ and ‘Economics’. The topics varied greatly, from natural experiments in economics, based on the example of the voter turnout, to market efficiency, stock market bubbles, and the opportunity to combine the results of several models at a time.

The main objective of my workshops is to demonstrate, that the real economist is interested in different things, that may seem unexpected and difficult from time to time, but he can get the answers, using the methods, which are studied during basic courses in economic theory and econometrics.