COURSE DESCRIPTIONS
The courses offered in this program may change from year to year as student
and faculty interests evolve. The courses listed below are the core courses
and those designed specifically for this program. Additional courses of
interest are offered throughout the University.
Introduction to optimization methods and partial equilibrium. Theories
of utility and consumer behavior, production and firm behavior. Introduction
to uncertainty and the economics of information, and to non competitive
market structures.
How can one estimate the number of people infected with AIDS? What
is the best way to schedule a public housing redevelopment project?
Does capital punishment deter homicide? These problems and more
are considered in Policy Modeling. Building on earlier course work
in quantitative analysis and statistics, Policy Modeling includes
"back of the envelope" probabilistic models, Markov processes,
queuing theory, and linear/integer programming. These techniques
are applied to a number of important policy problems. In addition
to lectures, assigned articles and text readings, and short problem
sets, students will be responsible for completing a take-home midterm
exam and a number of cases. In some instances, it will be possible
to take a real problem from formulation to solution, and compare
your own analysis to what actually happened.
Students learn how to formulate and solve optimization problems. Topics covered include linear and integer programming, non-linear optimization, dynamic programming, and queueing theory. Many real problems from various areas in manufacturing and service operations are covered throughout the course.
These courses examine research into accounting institutions. Topics are
generally drawn from areas of income measurement, managerial evaluation,
industry structure and regulation in the accounting industry, informational
efficiency of public markets, and asset valuation models under incomplete
markets.
This term-long seminar introduces participants to experimental methods in economics research and conducts a survey of experimental results. Depending on the interests of the participants, we cover topics from auctions, asset markets, game theory, monetary theory, public goods, corporate finance, market microstructure, institutional economics, and so on. The seminar participants are expected to design and conduct their own experiment and write a term paper.
These courses examine financial theory and its empirical validation. The
first term covers single period models. Topics covered include arbitrage,
utility representation, portfolio theory, risk, mean-variance analysis
and the CAPM, and efficient markets. The second term concentrates on multi-period
models. Topics covered include multi-period portfolio considerations,
option pricing and contingent claims, the resolution of uncertainty, and
the term structure of interest rates.
This is a Ph.D. level course covering various topics in corporate
finance and market microstructure. The goal of the course is to
introduce students to the latest research in these areas via an
analysis of recent journal articles and working papers. The corporate
finance section of the course covers elementary game theory, optimal
debt levels, event study methodology, bankruptcy laws and their
impact on financial structure, security design, and initial public
offers. The market microstructure section covers inventory models,
trading on asymmetric information and its price impact, social welfare
issues associated with insider trading, bid-ask spread, information
disclosure, and socially optimal trading mechanisms.
This is a doctoral level course in the empirical analysis of financial data. The course will cover some of the more important works in empirical asset pricing, beginning with the early development and tests of the efficient market paradigm, but will focus more on modern evidence and research on market efficiency, trading profits and information-based abritrage. The course will also cover common empirical methods and databases used in asset pricing. The course will require the reading of three to five research papers per week, presentations and class participation in discussions, referee reports, and a final empirical paper.
Much of modern financial economics works with models in which agents are rational, in that they maximize expected utility and use Bayes' law to update their beliefs. Behavioral finance is a large and active field which studies models in which some agents are less than fully rational. Such models have two building blocks: limits to abritrage, which make it difficult for rational traders to undo the dislocations caused by less rational traders; and psychology, which catalogues the kinds of deviations from full rationality we might expect to see. We discuss these two topics, and then consider a number of applications: asset pricing (the aggregate stock market and the cross-section of average returns); individual trading behavior; and corporate finance (security issuance, corporate investment, and mergers).
Students and faculty discuss the current academic literature.
The objective of the seminar is to provide students with a broad-based
understanding of the scholarly literature in the marketing field and to
encourage open discussion between faculty and students about substantive
marking topics. Specific areas that are covered include consumer behavior;
advertising and promotion; pricing; distribution; product planning and
development; retailing; marketing strategy; and marketing research methodology.
Scheduled meetings will include student presentations and general class
discussion with faculty members, and visiting researchers.
This seminar examines research on the psychology of decision making, focusing on choice. Although the normative issue of how decisions should be made is relevant, the descriptive issue of how decisions are made is the main focus of the course. Topics of discussion include decision framing and mental accounting, prospect theory and loss aversion, context effects, task effects, goal-directed choice, preference reversals, intertemporal choice, behavioral economics, and other topics. The goal of the seminar is threefold: to foster a critical appreciation of existing knowledge in behavioral decision theory, to develop the students’ skills in identifying and testing interesting research ideas, and to explore research opportunities for adding to that knowledge. Students generally enroll from a variety of disciplines, including cognitive and social psychology, behavioral economics, finance, marketing, political science, medicine and public health.
This seminar examines research on the psychology of decision making, focusing on judgment. Although the normative issue of how decisions should be made is relevant, the descriptive issue of how decisions are made is the main focus of the course. Topics of discussion include judgment heuristics and biases, confidence and calibration, issues of well-being including predictions and experiences, regret and counterfactuals, and other topics. The goal of the seminar is threefold: to foster a critical appreciation of existing knowledge in behavioral decision theory, to develop the students’ skills in identifying and testing interesting research ideas, and to explore research opportunities for adding to that knowledge. Students generally enroll from a variety of disciplines, including cognitive and social psychology, behavioral economics, finance, marketing, political science, medicine and public health.
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