This course introduces students to a selection of ideas that in the past fifty years have merited a Nobel Prize in economics. The goal of the course is twofold. First, it serves as an introduction to a wide range of economic topics. Second, by studying the most influential economic ideas, students learn firsthand how economic science has evolved. The course is not structured chronologically, but according to economic areas, such as microeconomics, macroeconomics, finance, poverty, and the environment. No prior knowledge of economics or statistics is assumed.
This seminar investigates how data and economics can be used to understand and solve some of the most pressing contemporary social issues in the United States. Topics include equality of opportunity, education, health, climate change, criminal justice, and discrimination. In the context of these topics, the course provides an introduction to some basic economic concepts and data analysis techniques. No prior knowledge of economics or statistics is assumed.
Introductory microeconomics with a special emphasis on quantitative methods and examples. Intended for students with limited or no experience with calculus.
An introduction to the basic tools of microeconomics to provide a rigorous framework for understanding how individuals, firms, markets, and governments allocate scarce resources. The design and evaluation of public policy.
An introduction that stresses how the macroeconomy works, including the determination of output, unemployment, inflation, interest rates, and exchange rates. Economic theory is applied to current events.
Introduction to data analysis from the beginning of the econometrics sequence; exposure to modern empirical economics; and development of credible economic analysis. This course emphasizes working directly and early with data, through such economic examples as studies of environmental/natural resource economics, intergenerational mobility, discrimination, and finance. Topics include: probability, statistics, and sampling; selection, causation and causal inference; regression and model specification; and machine learning and big data.
The theory of resource allocation and its applications. Topics include the theory of choice, consumer and firm behavior, production, price determination in different market structures, welfare, and market failure.
Contemporary theories of employment, finance, money, business fluctuations, and economic growth. Their implications for monetary and fiscal policy. Emphasis on empirical studies, financial and monetary crises, and recent policies and problems.
Comprehensive and theoretical examination of econometrics, with further exploration of topics covered in ECON 117. A term research project addresses a research question chosen by the student, and involves the application of learned methods to a relevant data set.
Similar to ECON 122 but with a more intensive treatment of the mathematical foundations of macroeconomic modeling, and with rigorous study of additional topics. Recommended for students considering graduate study in economics.
Continuation of ECON 135 with a focus on econometric theory and practice: problems that arise from the specification, estimation, and interpretation of models of economic behavior. Topics include classical regression and simultaneous equations models; panel data; and limited dependent variables. Recommended for students considering graduate study in economics.
This is a second half of the semester class on applications of game theory. We build on the learnings from introductory game theory courses like ECON/GLBL 159 or MGT 822. The course aims to introduce important ideas and tools from game theory, and use them to answer questions in social sciences, law, and business. For instance, how can we use game theory to design sound environmental policies and formulate environmental treaties? How large should juries be, and should we require unanimous verdicts? Why do bargaining parties sometimes engage in lengthy and costly legal battles? How do sellers decide the best format for an auction to sell a good? When do we see price wars? The topics include basics of mechanism design, bargaining with incomplete information, dynamic pricing, and applications of repeated games.
Analysis of contemporary policy problems related to academic under performance in lower income urban schools and the concomitant achievement gaps among various racial and ethnic groups in United States K-12 education. Historical review of opportunity inequalities and policy solutions proposed to ameliorate differences in achievement and job readiness. Students benefit from practical experience and interdisciplinary methods, including a lab component with time spent in a New Haven high school.
The aim of the course is to build up a sufficiently strong foundation in the philosophy of science to allow students to critically assess the challenge posed to the rational choice framework in social science by evidence of human irrationality. Readings are drawn from philosophy, economics (including behavioral economics), and psychology.
The objective of this course is to examine some of the fundamental forces that shape the process of economic development. This course is divided into three sections: (i) Market Failure: with an analysis of credit, labor, and insurance markets in developing countries. (ii) Social Response: how community networks emerge in response to market failure. We study the positive and negative consequences of this community involvement for growth and development; in the short-run and the long-run. We also provide economic foundations for the emergence of social norms and identity, as well as the dynamic inefficiencies that they can generate with economic development. (iii) Biological Response: how biological adaptation to economic conditions in the pre-modern economy can have negative consequences for nutritional status and health in developing economies. Apart from providing a particular perspective on development, an additional objective of this course demonstrates the use of economic theory in informing empirical research.
Limits that antitrust laws, as applied and interpreted by agencies, courts, and competitors, place on firm behavior. Economic theories underlying antitrust enforcement. Whether legal rules restricting competitive behavior increase social welfare and how they affect managerial choices. The evidence and reasoning advanced in key antitrust cases; how outcomes may affect social welfare and firm strategies. Goals and procedures of US and EU antitrust agencies.
This course covers recent scholarship on the political economy of development. We begin by covering macro-historical facts, such as the impact of legacy institutions, and move on to micro issues, such as vote-buying, clientelism, and ethnic discrimination.
Introduction to game theory and choice under uncertainty. Analysis of the role of information and uncertainty for individual choice behavior, as well as application to the decision theory under uncertainty. Analysis of strategic interaction among economic agents, leading to the theory of auctions and mechanism design. Recommended for students considering graduate study in economics.
Financial management from inside the corporation or operating entity. Topics include capital budgeting and valuation, optimal capital structure, initial public offerings, mergers, and corporate restructuring. Cases and problem sets provide applications.
Paradigms for algorithmic problem solving: greedy algorithms, divide and conquer, dynamic programming, and network flow. NP completeness and approximation algorithms for NP-complete problems. Algorithms for problems from economics, scheduling, network design and navigation, geometry, biology, and optimization. Provides algorithmic background essential to further study of computer science. Only one of CPSC 365, CPSC 366, or CPSC 368 may be taken for credit.
Paradigms for algorithmic problem solving: greedy algorithms, divide and conquer, dynamic programming, and network flow. NP completeness and approximation algorithms for NP-complete problems. Algorithms for problems from economics, scheduling, network design and navigation, geometry, biology, and optimization. Provides algorithmic background essential to further study of computer science. Only one of CPSC 365, CPSC 366, or CPSC 368 may be taken for credit.
Introduction to modern macroeconomic models and how to use the models to examine some of the key issues that have faced monetary policymakers during and after the global financial crisis of 2008–2009.
Analysis of imperfectly competitive markets, focusing on the interactions among firm behavior, market structure, and market outcomes. Topics include oligopoly, collusion, predation, firm entry, advertising, and price discrimination as well as public policy implications of market behavior.
Study of forces that drive the process of innovation. Creativity and creative destruction; the innovator's dilemma; incentives to innovate; competitive advantage; industry evolution; intellectual property. Use of both formal theoretical models and quantitative empirical studies, as well as descriptive studies from management strategy and economic history.
Introduction to the basic tools of numerical analysis and how to apply them to the study of economic models in a variety of subdisciplines, including macroeconomics, labor economics, industrial organization, public finance, and environmental economics.
Study of systematic thinking about competition and strategy using key concepts of microeconomics. Analysis of data, with consideration of economic theory and statistical methods using tools in Excel and Stata. Topics include logical thinking, empirical analysis, modeling, and estimation.
The goal of this seminar is to introduce students to algorithms commonly used in commercial applications and to the blockchain technology. Students are asked to program algorithm prototypes and to reflect on existing economic research based on the programming experience gained in the course.
How much should I be saving at age 35? How much of my portfolio should be invested in stocks at age 50? Which mortgage should I choose, and when should I refinance it? How much can I afford to spend per year in retirement? This course covers prescriptive models of personal saving, asset allocation, borrowing, and spending. The course is designed to answer questions facing anybody who manages their own money or is a manager in an organization that is trying to help clients manage their money.
How much should I be saving at age 35? How much of my portfolio should be invested in stocks at age 50? Which mortgage should I choose, and when should I refinance it? How much can I afford to spend per year in retirement? This course covers prescriptive models of personal saving, asset allocation, borrowing, and spending. The course is designed to answer questions facing anybody who manages their own money or is a manager in an organization that is trying to help clients manage their money.
This course has an applied econometrics focus. The focus is on forecasting macroeconomic and financial variables. Macroeconomic forecasting concerns forecasting variables like GDP, components of GDP like consumption, investment, and imports, inflation, the unemployment rate, interest rates, the government deficit, and exchange rates. There are various forecasting methods, some purely statistical time series techniques and some using economic theory. We consider both. Financial forecasting is more problematic, since changes in asset prices may be roughly unpredictable. We also examine topics like momentum forecasting to see if some asset prices are predictable.
This seminar seeks to introduce the world of investment management to students, across a range of investment strategies from public stocks to private equity and real estate. The instructors, both senior members of the Yale Investment Office, the department that manages the University's $41 billion endowment, guide class discussion in response to assigned reading and guest speaker visits. The distinguished guest speakers, including world-renowned hedge fund managers, venture capital luminaries and Yale's chief investment manager Matthew Mendelsohn '07 are at the heart of the course. These speakers join the seminar for a discussion of how their firms approach the investment landscape and how they seek to achieve market-beating returns. Students are asked to engage with and analyze the speaker's investment strategy and to think about the strategy from the perspective of an institutional investor like Yale.
In recent years, cryptocurrencies and blockchains have seen broad experimentation and adoption across many areas in the modern economy. However, the foundations of blockchains can be traced back to many classical results in the study of incentives and distributed systems, such as in economics, cryptography, and computer science. This seminar aims to introduce students to the theoretical underpinning of blockchain technology and help develop skills in economic analysis. We cover the related literature and more recent developments and applications such as Bitcoin, decentralized exchanges, and smart contracts. We explore this novel field through the lens of mechanism design, i.e., aligning the incentives of strategic agents to induce desirable outcomes in an economic system.
The courses cover the economics of belief formation broadly defined, from both a theoretical and empirical perspective. A special focus is paid to violations of Bayesian rationality. Main topics include Blackwell framework of information acquisition, and applications of it to communication games; the experimental literature on belief formation; the theoretical literature on behavioral biases and mis-specification; the empirical literature on knowledge production and dissemination. Significant student input and presentation.
This multidisciplinary class is an exploration of the background of today’s bestselling medicines, their huge commercial impact, and the companies that created them. It focuses on the most compelling aspects of drug development and company formation in the context of topical issues like cancer treatment, gene editing, stem cell therapy, the opioid epidemic, and drug pricing controversies.
Facets of contemporary economic globalization, including trade, investment, and migration. Challenges and threats of globalization: inclusion and inequality, emerging global players, global governance, climate change, and nuclear weapons proliferation.
The theory and applications of cooperative games. Topics include matching, bargaining, cost allocation, market games, voting games, and games on networks.
Egalitarian theories of justice and their critics. Readings in philosophy are paired with analytic methods from economics. Topics include Rawlsian justice, utilitarianism, the veil of ignorance, Dworkin's resource egalitarianism, Roemer's equality of opportunity, Marxian exploitation, and Nozickian procedural justice. Some discussion of American economic inequality, Nordic social democracy, and the politics of inequality.
This course explores topics on dynamic games: we consider situations where agents interact repeatedly. We cover applications related to a range of fields from industrial organization (price wars and oligopoly with imperfect monitoring) to macroeconomic policy (time consistency). Students should have a solid background in multivariate calculus, be comfortable with rigorous proofs and mathematical arguments, and be willing to learn further mathematical tools as needed.
The seminar introduces students to the basic models in the principal-agent literature, including moral hazard and adverse selection, as well as the legal structures that regulate agents and other fiduciaries.
The seminar introduces students to the basic models in the principal-agent literature, including moral hazard and adverse selection, as well as the legal structures that regulate agents and other fiduciaries.
This course is the continuation of ECON 491. Students who write a two-term senior essay are required to enroll in ECON 492, after enrolling in either ECON 491 or a senior seminar in the fall. Students retain the same advisor for the two semesters. Those writing the senior essay from a seminar need to ensure the advisor will continue to work with them in the spring.
Junior and senior economics majors desiring a directed reading course in special topics in economics not covered in other graduate or undergraduate courses may elect this course, not more than once, with written permission of the director of undergraduate studies and of the instructor. The instructor meets with the student regularly, typically for an hour a week, and the student writes a paper or a series of short essays. Junior and senior majors may take this course for a letter grade, but it does not meet the requirement for a department seminar.