Undergraduate Spring Course Descriptions

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. 

Similar to ECON 115, but taught as a lecture discussion with limited enrollment.

Similar to ECON 115, but taught as a lecture discussion with limited enrollment.

Similar to ECON 116, but taught as a lecture discussion with limited enrollment.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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 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.  

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.

Topics related to capital markets, with emphasis on the financial crisis of 2007–2008. The design, pricing, and trading of corporate bonds, credit derivatives, and money market instruments; bond restructuring, bond ratings, and financial crises; basic tools used to address such issues, including fixed income mathematics, binomial option pricing, and swaps.

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. Either CPSC 365 or CPSC 366 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.

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.

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.

A theoretical introduction to economic models of social learning and strategic information transmission, using tools from game theory and probability theory. The rationality of individual behavior as affected by pathologies such as herding, informational cascades, or strategic delays; the effectiveness of communication in settings in which an informed agent communicates information to a less informed agent.

Since the end of WWII the overwhelming majority of war casualties have been the result of internal conflict. This includes insurgency situations in which foreign powers prop up a weak internal government. In this course we apply microeconomic techniques, theoretical and empirical, to the analysis of internal conflict, its causes and consequences. Topics include forced migration, ethnic conflict, long-term consequences of war and individual choices to participate in violence. Readings comprise frontier research papers and students will learn to critically engage with cutting-edge research designs.

Smoking, alcoholism, illicit drugs, and obesity studied from economic and policy perspectives. Focus on causes of and solutions to problems.

Why do cities exist? Why do firms cluster? Why did some U.S. cities prosper in recent decades while others declined? What are the structural roots of our housing crises today? This course takes cities as our laboratory and asks about important aspects that are reshaping the very fabric of our cities and neighborhoods.

Assessment of alternative policies and programs designed to promote economic development; examination of fundamental problems of underdeveloped areas and consideration of how and whether such programs resolve them. The roles of indigenous institutions in low-income countries in alleviating problems of underdevelopment.

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 senior seminar explores potential government responses to recent economic trends. It emphasizes the interplay between economic theory and empirical analysis to make informed policy recommendations.

Some policy makers assert that immigrants hurt existing workers and increase the burden of the welfare state, while others claim that immigrants fill necessary jobs and enhance the creativity and dynamism of the economy. The course examines the historical and econometric evidence that scholars have brought to these debates.