Master's Programme in Applied Econometrics and Economic Modelling

🎓 This week, the Master’s thesis defenses of five outstanding AEEM graduates were successfully held.
📘 Their work addressed major contemporary economic issues through rigorous empirical analysis, advanced econometric methods, and strong engagement with real-world data.

Among this year’s graduates:
— Angela Dimitrova developed a multivariate unobserved-components model for Bulgaria to jointly estimate potential output, trend unemployment, and inflation dynamics in a small open economy setting.
— Christian Tsvetkov studied resource misallocation and firm scaling with World Bank Enterprise Surveys data, focusing on productivity dispersion and cross-country differences across development levels.
— Gloria Georgieva investigated the macroeconomic and banking-sector determinants of non-performing loans in the EU, including the role of government guarantees as a risk-sharing mechanism.
— Alaeddine Khallid examined the impact of Generative AI on European productivity and industrial output, showing that highly AI-exposed industries expanded output and hours worked rather than simply replacing labour.
— Alex Kamenov analysed structural changes and speculative bubble dynamics in Sofia’s housing market using high-frequency time-series data and complementary diagnostic methods.

These five theses reflect the programme’s commitment to strong analytical training, methodological discipline, and the application of econometric tools to relevant economic and policy questions.

👏 Congratulations to all graduates, with best wishes for success in their professional careers and future research.

The programme is taught in English and was launched in 2016 with the support of Experian Bulgaria. Over the years, it has benefited from successful partnerships with leading companies from Bulgaria and the United Kingdom, which have contributed real-world data, teaching resources, and lecturers and mentors to the learning process. In addition to the Master’s programme, the Faculty of Economics and Business Administration also offers a PhD programme in Applied Econometrics and Economic Modelling in both Bulgarian and English.

📘 We are pleased to announce the publication of Applied Statistics with R, authored by Assoc. Prof. Kaloyan Ganev, faculty member at Стопански факултет and AEEM professor.

Published by Sofia University Press, the book offers a comprehensive university-level framework for applied statistics using R - from data handling and probability theory to statistical inference, regression modelling (including GLM), and time series analysis (ARIMA, SARIMA, exponential smoothing).

Written in Bulgarian, the textbook represents a significant contribution to strengthening analytical training and data culture in Bulgaria. The book is released in open access and is freely available.

🎉 We warmly congratulate our colleague on this substantial academic achievement.

Link in the comments.

📘 New Book by Dr. Georgi Nalbantov

We are pleased to share the publication of a new book by Dr. Georgi Nalbantov, lecturer in Statistical Learning in the MSc programme Applied Econometrics and Economic Modelling.

💡His book, “Advances in Regression and Classification: Regularization-based Models”, published by Sofia University St. Kliment Ohridski, Faculty of Economics and Business Administration, provides a rigorous and structured treatment of modern regularization methods for regression and classification - a cornerstone of contemporary statistical learning and predictive modelling.

📖 The book offers both theoretical foundations and practical insight into regularization-based approaches that are central to high-dimensional data analysis and machine learning applications.

📎 The book is available free of charge, and we are sharing the download link in the comments.

🎉 Congratulations to Georgi on this important contribution!