Contact info:
Office: Hagey Hall 239
Phone: 519-888-4567, ext. 32960
Email: slluis@uwaterloo.ca
The following is a paraphrased account of the interview with Professor Stéphanie Lluis.
What courses do you teach?
Currently 321 introduction to econometrics and 487 topics in labour economics
What do you enjoy most about teaching?
I like to keep learning things and for me having to prepare my classes by trying to update things - it's closer to being a student. I would like to be a student for longer and it's one way.
What do you think students struggle the most with?
For 321 econometrics at least, it requires regular studying and from the very beginning and potentially being different from other courses especially because prerequisites might have been taken a while ago so I've noticed students struggle to catch up. I try to give students exercises. They have to realize the gaps in their knowledge and try to fill them quickly.
For the topics course 487, I've put in prereqs such as the basics of econometrics. Students have to be ready to view things in a formal way, meaning that there is math involved instead of just graphs such as maximizing profits. Anybody can take this course, I only require 301 and 321 that teach the technical tools required, it could be their first exposure to a labour experience.
What topics are the hardest to understand for students? why do you think that is?
Whenever you become more abstract. Students get the idea if its current events or in the news they can relate. As we move away from current events which is very contextual to a more abstract concept to analyze a problem at a higher level such as mechanisms behind ideas or the assumptions, students have a harder time understanding why we do this and what it is. Also, reasoning in terms of functions and in statistics its distributions - it is harder. You have to step back and understand the bigger picture, there has to be some motivation for the whole thing and sometimes you have to wait.
What do you think most students don’t know but should?
Coming from France it was different, it was courses everyday all day long so when I came here, only 3 hours a week per class, it was like a holiday! When I came to North America, it took me a while to realize that for one course it's 3 hours a week in class but 9 hours in your week to study on your own. For example, 4 courses is 12 hours a week plus the 36 hours outside of class fills your week, clearly. You have to do it on your own, I have the impression that students sometimes overlook that part. What we do in class gives you the basics and explains the more tricky parts but there are so many other things you can get from the textbook or from the notes or exercises that we don’t have time to do in class. You can't do everything in class. If students need more they have to ask me for more. Of course its a question of interest, as well. In the topics course I would expect students to be more interested. Some students have 90s. I am confident that students that are getting good grades are interested.
It comes back regularly that students don’t know how much math there’s going to be. There's going to be a lot of math involved in 3rd and 4th year. I would recommend taking courses in sequence, try to put courses together otherwise if there is a semester or two in between clearly we forget things. If they are too far away from each other it might affect your grade in the later courses. I know students pick harder courses so it won’t hurt their GPA, it's strategic and I understand but the counterpart to that is you may be taking courses too far apart.
What is a book that you recommend all aspiring labour economists read?
I would definitely say if you have extra time which you should (*chuckles*) blogs are interesting to follow like Marginal Revolution or Freakonomics; Mankiw has a good one. Borjas talks about immigration issues that are interesting. For books, I actually was given for my birthday Le Capital by Marx which every economics student should eventually read. But I reread it in a different way which might be more appealing to students, the manga.
What are some interesting research questions in your area of expertise that undergraduates can investigate as a senior essay research topic?
Many things have been done, a lot of it has been done in the US but not with Canadian Data. Such as what the minimum wage's on effect on different labour market outcomes such as employment duration and employment rate but there are other interesting questions. The minimum wage even though only effects a smaller population, it's interesting to students because its them but also has an effect on the rest of the economy.
How individuals use their time would be of interest to students (in terms of leisure labour choices). Sometimes its old data, that's the problem. Like for trends its the best is the Labour Force Survey (LFS), which is done every year. I have had some students download it every year and do trends in labour such as discrimination with regards to immigrants, gender wage gap, choices of occupation, and why they make different choices. And we have access to that through the library.
