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 121 but with a more intensive treatment of consumer and producer theory, and covering additional topics including choice under uncertainty, game theory, contracting under hidden actions or hidden information, externalities and public goods, and general equilibrium theory. Recommended for students considering graduate study in economics.
Foundations of mathematical statistics: probability theory, distribution theory, parameter estimation, hypothesis testing, regression, and computer programming. Recommended for students considering graduate study in economics.
An introduction to game theory and strategic thinking. Ideas such as dominance, backward induction, Nash equilibrium, evolutionary stability, commitment, credibility, asymmetric information, adverse selection, and signaling are applied to games played in class and to examples drawn from economics, politics, the movies, and elsewhere.
Application of economic principles to the study of the U.S. health care system. Emphasis on basic principles about the structure of the U.S. system, current problems, proposed solutions, and the context of health policy making and politics.
A global view of the world economy and the salient issues in the short and the long run. Economics of crises, fiscal policy, debt, inequality, global imbalances, climate change. The course is based on reading, debating, and applying cutting edge macroeconomic research.
European economic growth and development from the late seventeenth century through the first stages of the British industrial revolution. The role of institutional development, trade and imperialism, agricultural improvements, and industrialization. Particular attention to comparisons between Britain and other parts of Europe.
This course is intended to provide an introduction to the economic analysis of law. We examine the economic rationale(s) underlying various legal doctrines of both common law and statutory law, as well as the economic consequences of different legal doctrines. Previous coursework in economics, while helpful, is not a prerequisite for the course.
The course is an introduction to important economic ideas: preferences and rationality, Pareto efficiency, economic equilibrium in a capitalist economy, externalities, the role of the state, uncertainty and von Neumann-Morgenstern utility, the principle of insurance, elementary game theory (Nash equilibrium), the median voter theorem, political equilibrium with party competition, distributive justice, equality of opportunity, and Arrow’s impossibility theorem. These topics are essential tools for political economists.
This course develops the theoretical knowledge and applied skills needed to understand empirical economic research and to plan and execute empirical projects. Topics include randomized trials, regression, instrumental variables, differences-in-differences, regression-discontinuity designs, and simultaneous equations models.
Introduction to the economic analysis of investment decisions and financial markets. Topics include time discounting, portfolio choice, equilibrium pricing, arbitrage, market efficiency, equity valuation, fixed-income securities, derivative pricing, and financial intermediation.
The objective of this course is to give an overview of how economic analysis has developed, and an introduction to the varied ways in which some of the great economists of the past have gone about studying how the economy functions. We discuss the relevance of their theories to public policy and the role of the state, and consider the roles of pre-analytic vision, improvements in analytical technique, and external events (such as the Great Depression or Global Financial Crisis) in the development of economic analysis.
Microeconomic theory brought to bear on current issues in natural resource policy. Topics include regulation of pollution, hazardous waste management, depletion of the world's forests and fisheries, wilderness and wildlife preservation, and energy planning.
The essentials of energy and environmental economics, with applications. Analysis of core topics in public goods, intertemporal choice, uncertainty, decision theory, and exhaustible resources. Applications include energy security, nuclear power, the relationship between nuclear power and nuclear proliferation, and climate change.
An introduction to general equilibrium theory and its application to finance and the theory of money. Recommended for students considering graduate study in economics, or a career in quantitative finance.
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.
Comprehensive survey of the causes, events, policy responses, and aftermath of the recent global financial crisis. Study of the dynamics of financial crises in a modern economy. Prerequisite: Successful completion of a course in introductory economics.
A study of how consumers and firms are affected by the globalization of the world economy. Topics include trade costs, the current account, exchange rate pass-through, international macroeconomic co-movement, multinational production, and gains from globalization.
Individual and collective choice in the presence of uncertainty and asymmetric information. Implications of such decision making for economic phenomena. Basic analytical tools for studying decisions under uncertainty. Asset markets, adverse selection, screening, signaling, moral hazard, incomplete contracts, bilateral trade with asymmetric information, and mechanism design.
Introduction to international and environmental economics and to research that combines the two fields. Methods for designing and analyzing environmental policy when economic activity and pollution cross political borders. Effects of market openness on the environment and on environmental regulation; international economics and climate change.
Analysis of firms’ incentives to innovate, focusing on the effects of market power on the intensity of innovative activity. Topics include strategic investment in innovation, patent races, the diffusion of knowledge, intellectual property (IP) protection systems, IP licensing, research joint ventures, litigation, venture capital, and conflicts between IP rights and antitrust regulation.
This is an advanced course covers basic univariate and multivariate models and methods used to analyze financial and economic time series data and panel time series data. Topics include: classic linear models; serial dependence, autocorrelation in error variances (ARCH, GARCH); methods that allow for nonlinearity, tail dependence, comovements, conditional value at risk, fat-tails, nonstationarity; vector autoregressive models; factor models; Markov switching, latent factors, measurement errors, stochastic volatility; empirical asset pricing models. The aim of the course is to help students write their senior essays and start their own research in economics and finance.
Introduction to the different roles and responsibilities of modern central banks, including the operation of payments systems, monetary policy, supervision and regulation, and financial stability. Discussion of different ways to structure central banks to best manage their responsibilities.
A mathematically rigorous investigation of the interplay of economic theory and computer science, with an emphasis on the relationship of incentive-compatibility and algorithmic efficiency. Our main focus is on algorithmic tools in mechanism design, algorithms and complexity theory for learning and computing Nash and market equilibria, and the price of anarchy. Case studies in Web search auctions, wireless spectrum auctions, matching markets, and network routing, and social networks.
The course covers the history, science, sociology, statistics, and economic impacts of catastrophes, focusing on pandemics and climate change. The course ranges in content from humanistic through social sciences to epidemiology, and some parts are highly technical.
The aim of this course is to analyze the ways that geography determines economic outcomes. We discuss and analyze data on regional economic activity and how economic shocks propagate in space. We pair those data with simple models where geography plays a crucial role in the determination of economic activity and discuss how changes in this geography lead some regions to grow and economic outcomes to diverge. Various policies that affect the spatial allocation of economic activity, such as infrastructure investment, local taxes, and transfers, are analyzed
This course has an applied econometrics focus. Topics include voting behavior, betting markets, and various issues in sports. The aim of the course is to help students prepare original empirical research using econometric tools and to read empirical papers in economics and other social sciences. Students write three empirical papers. The first can be an extension of an existing article, where some of the results are duplicated and then extended. The second is similar to the first with no example provided. The third is an original paper within the range of topics covered in the course, where data are collected and analyzed using relevant econometric techniques.
The role of hedge funds in the United States financial markets and hedge fund behavior; understanding what hedge funds do, why they exist, and how they are different from other investment vehicles. Study of investment strategies that provide opportunity and risk for investors and study of academic papers analyzing (risky) arbitrage strategies.
In this course we apply microeconomic techniques, theoretical and empirical, to the analysis of internal violent conflict, including civil wars, terrorism and insurgencies, 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.
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.
A case-oriented study of principal issues and investment types found in substantial private equity portfolios. Discussion of enterprise valuation, value creation, business economics, negotiation, and legal structure, based on primary source materials and original cases.
Economic evolution and prospects of the Latin American and Caribbean (LAC) countries. Topics include the period from independence to the 1930s; import substitution and industrialization to the early 1980s; the debt crisis and the "lost decade"; reform and disappointment in the late 1980s and the 1990s; exploration of selected episodes in particular countries; and speculations about the future.
This course studies the economics of innovation and the effects of artificial intelligence on different industries. Topics include economics of the intellectual property (IP) protection system; strategic choices in innovation and competition; patent races; measurement and big data; the sharing and digitalized economy; collective intelligence and decisions; online auctions; venture capital; legal and social infrastructure.
How law and economic theory define and conceptualize economic discrimination; whether economic models adequately describe behaviors of discriminators as documented in court cases and government hearings; the extent to which economic theory and econometric techniques aid our understanding of actual marketplace discrimination.
Focus on systemic risk, banking crises, financial stability and macroprudential policies. Additional emphasis on systemic risk and prudential policies in peripheral European economies and emerging economies.
Senior essays are an opportunity for students to engage in independent, original economic research. Essays are not reviews of the literature, rather each should be an examination of a hypothesis using the tools of economics. In particular, the essay must contain original research and/or analysis. They can be theoretical, empirical or computational. The senior essays that receive A's and are awarded prizes are typically those that use economics tools (and, where appropriate, data) to offer fresh insights on questions.
Students enrolling in this one-term course need to find an advisor. There are no page requirements or formatting requirements. Generally, essays run about 30 pages. Advice regarding bibliographies, graphs, etc. should be given by your advisor.
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.
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.