Oleksandr (Alex) Zhylyevskyy: Teaching

Oleksandr (Alex) Zhylyevskyy
Oleksandr Zhylyevskyy

Overview

My responsibilities at ISU include teaching an undergraduate labor economics course Econ 320, a graduate labor economics course Econ 621, and an undergraduate principles of macroeconomics course Econ 102. In the past, I taught a graduate econometrics course Econ 672.

Econ 320: Labor Economics

This undergraduate course covers the topics of labor demand, labor supply, unemployment, human capital, compensation, and immigration.

Econ 621: Advanced Labor Demand and Labor Markets

This course is designed to provide a graduate student with a review of theoretical and empirical methods employed in current labor economics research. In particular, the course focuses on the topics of labor demand, job search and matching, unemployment, market determination of wages, compensating differentials, employment contracts and incentives, and wage inequality and discrimination. Note: Previously, the course was numbered as Econ 521 and Econ 621X.

Econ 102: Principles of Macroeconomics

This course is designed to help undergraduate students understand the basics of aggregate economic activity and the effects of fiscal and monetary policy on national income, unemployment, and inflation.

Econ 672: Econometrics II

This course is a component of the core of the Ph.D. program in economics. In Springs of 2009-2017, I taught the first half of the course, which provided graduate students with an in-depth treatment of cross-sectional econometric methods. The focus was on asymptotic properties of extremum estimators, such as MLE and GMM, and on approaches to large sample statistical inference. In addition, I discussed qualitative variable models and simultaneous equation systems.

Teaching experience prior to ISU

I taught undergraduate principles of micro- and macroeconomics courses at the University of Virginia. There, I also was fortunate to serve as a teaching assistant to Kenneth G. Elzinga, a nationally renowned expert in undergraduate economics education, and to work as a teaching assistant in several graduate economics courses.

Teaching philosophy

My main goals when teaching undergraduate courses is to help students learn how to think more clearly about economic issues and better understand the objectives of economic policies and their effects on our daily lives. I also hope to promote economic literacy so that a typical student can be a better citizen and live a more meaningful life.

My main goal when teaching graduate courses is to equip students with the knowledge of relevant economic theory and empirical methods, in order to set them on the path to become successful applied economists.

For details on my teaching philosophy, see the statement of approach toward teaching and classroom instruction in .pdf.