Courses

Reviews lecture material presented in ECON 1110 lectures; provides problem-solving techniques, study tips, and additional problems to prepare for exams and problem sets; provides additional time for questions and discussion of concepts. Provides additional instruction for students who need reinforcement.

Full details for ECON 1001 - Principles of Micro-Economics Supplement

Reviews lecture material presented in ECON 1120 lectures; provides problem-solving techniques, study tips, and additional problems to prepare for exams and problem sets; provides additional time for questions and discussion of concepts. Provides additional instruction for students who need reinforcement.

Full details for ECON 1002 - Principles of Macro-Economics Supplement

Explanation and evaluation of how the price system operates in determining what goods are produced, how goods are produced, who receives income, and how the price system is modified and influenced by private organizations and government policy.

Full details for ECON 1110 - Introductory Microeconomics

Analysis of aggregate economic activity in relation to the level, stability, and growth of national income. Topics may include the determination and effects of unemployment, inflation, balance of payments, deficits, and economic development, and how these may be influenced by monetary, fiscal, and other policies.

Full details for ECON 1120 - Introductory Macroeconomics

This interdisciplinary course examines network structures and how they matter in everyday life. The course examines how each of the computing, economic, sociological and natural worlds are connected and how the structure of these connections affects each of these worlds. Tools of graph theory and game theory are taught and then used to analyze networks. Topics covered include the web, the small world phenomenon, markets, neural networks, contagion, search and the evolution of networks.

Full details for ECON 2040 - Networks

The pricing processes in a private enterprise economy are analyzed under varying competitive conditions, and their role in the allocation of resources and the functional distribution of national income is considered.

Full details for ECON 3030 - Intermediate Microeconomic Theory

Introduces the theory of national income and determination and economic growth in alternative models of the national economy. Examines the interaction and relation of these models to empirical aggregate economic data. Reviews national accounts, output and employment determination, price stability and economic growth, in the context of alternative government policy programs and the impact of globalization.

Full details for ECON 3040 - Intermediate Macroeconomic Theory

This course provides an introduction to probability and parametric inference. Topics include: random variables, standard distributions, the law of large numbers, the central limit theorem, likelihood-based estimation, sampling distributions and hypothesis testing.

Full details for ECON 3110 - Probability Models and Inference for the Social Sciences

Introduction to the theory and application of econometric techniques. Emphasis is on both development of techniques and applications of econometrics to economic questions. Topics include estimation and inference in bivariate and multiple regression models, instrumental variables, regression with qualitative information, heteroskedasticity, and serial correlation. Students are expected to apply techniques through regular empirical exercises with economic data.

Full details for ECON 3120 - Applied Econometrics

Provides an introduction to statistical inference and to principles of probability. It includes descriptive statistics, principles of probability, discrete and continuous distributions, and hypothesis testing (of sample means, proportions, variance). Regression analysis and correlation are introduced.

Full details for ECON 3130 - Statistics and Probability

This course covers methods used by social scientists to identify causal relationships in data, with a focus on evaluating the effects of real-world policies. Many social science analyses--including in the economics fields of public, labor, health, and development-aim to answer these types of policy-related causal questions: What is the effect of having health insurance on someone's health? Does the death penalty reduce crime? Will lowering class sizes increase students' academic achievement? The goal of this course is to train you to become both a high-quality consumer and producer of this type of research. You will learn about several research designs and data analysis methods for identifying causal relationships in data, read and assess empirical papers that apply these methods, and apply these methods to datasets yourself.

Full details for ECON 3171 - Causal Reasoning and Policy Evaluation I

This course surveys topics in crime and crime prevention, with a focus on thinking critically about empirical evidence. The first part of the course briefly introduces an economic model of crime and reviews relevant empirical methods. The remainder of the course is spent discussing a range of crime-related topics, including policing, incarceration, employment, drugs & alcohol, firearms, education, and health. Students will consider trade-offs to different crime prevention policies and gain experience framing and summarizing evidence for policymakers.

Full details for ECON 3255 - Economics of Crime

Examines the changing economic roles of women and men in the labor market and in the family. Topics include a historical overview of changing gender roles, the determinants of the gender division of labor in the family, trends in female and male labor-force participation, gender differences in occupations and earnings, the consequences of women's employment for the family, and a consideration of women's status in other countries.

Full details for ECON 3440 - Women in the Economy

Surveys economic and industrial issues in the sports industry. Topics include salary determination, including free agency, salary caps, salary arbitration; competitive balance and financial health of sports leagues; antitrust issues in sports; labor disputes, union history, and contract administration issues in sports leagues; discrimination in sports; and performance incentives.

Full details for ECON 3460 - The Economics of Collective Bargaining in Sports

This course will cover analytical models and empirical evidence on the functioning of international financial markets (exchange rates, capital flows, monetary policy spillovers). Emerging market perspectives on these issues will be emphasized, with a particular focus on the economies of China and India. The course will also survey novel financial technologies (Fintech, cryptocurrencies, central bank digital currencies) and their implications for monetary policy, financial regulation, and other policies. Students will be required to write an independent research paper (knowledge of econometrics strongly recommended).   

Full details for ECON 3545 - International Finance and Macroeconomics

Familiarizes students with the economic analysis of consumer policy issues. Uses the tools of microeconomic analysis to investigate the interaction between government and the marketplace, with an emphasis on how that interaction affects consumers. Examines the rationale for and effects of regulation of industry. Considers alternative theories of regulation, including the capture, economic, and public interest theories. Applies those theories to specific types of regulation, including economic regulation of specific industries (e.g., telecommunications, electricity, trucking, railroads, postal services) as well as to broader social regulation (e.g., health, safety, environmental). The effects of regulatory reform in numerous industries are also examined. An attempt is made to examine current topics relating to consumer policy.

Full details for ECON 3610 - The Economics of Consumer Policy

Some knowledge of game-theory is essential in today's age of complex decision-making, diplomacy, and corporate strategizing. This course is an introduction to the basic principles of game theory and rational choice. The course is designed for students with an interest in economics, political strategy, moral philosophy, and algorithmic reasoning. Important ideas and concepts, with real-life illustrations, will be discussed. Over the semester students will learn the essential ideas of Nash, Schelling and others, different conceptualizations of equilibrium, such as the Nash equilibrium and subgame perfection, and how they apply to different contexts, such as competition among firms, war, and diplomacy. The course will help us understand everyday phenomena, such as addiction, procrastination and moral dilemmas, and show how reasoning can be a critical input for personal happiness. Students will be introduced to some unresolved paradoxes of rational behavior and encouraged to try to solve them on their own.

Full details for ECON 3801 - Introduction to Game Theory and Strategic Thinking

This course will examine issues that arise when a country attempts to implement and maintain a "competition policy" as a way of promoting economic growth and efficiency. The basic reading material will start with actual cases (most of them arising under U.S. antitrust law), and use those cases to probe the legal, economic and broad policy issues that the cases raise.

Full details for ECON 3805 - Competition Law and Policy

The course will focus on how legal rules and regulations impact consumers in the marketplace. A significant portion of this course will focus on how developments in tort law, contract law, property law, and regulatory law influence social welfare and serve to protect consumers in their interactions with the marketplace. The course will also focus on how the federal regulatory agencies function and analyze the effectiveness of these agencies in protecting consumers. The course will focus specifically on the Food and Drug Administration and the Federal Trade Commission. In addition to students interested in public policy and economics, the course can be helpful to students who are interested in attending law school as students will get exposed to many of the concepts they will address in a first year law school curriculum.

Full details for ECON 3830 - Economics of Consumer Protection and the Law

Introduction to the use of economics as a tool in forming and evaluating environmental policy, with a focus on how economists measure effects of environmental quality and regulation. Topics include: externalities in an environmental context; regulation methods such as command and control, Pigouvian taxation, and cap and trade; methods for measuring the costs and benefits of environmental policy; overview of current environmental legislation; environmental quality and health; regulation and environmental justice.

Full details for ECON 3850 - Economics and Environmental Policy

This course will investigate energy issues from an economic and business perspective using a quantitative approach. In the first part of the course, students will learn how to think about energy through an economic and business lens. The second part of the course will focus on topical energy market issues such as imperfect competition, bidding in electricity markets, markets for oil and gas, and environmental regulation.

Full details for ECON 3870 - Business and Economics of Energy

Course focuses on global health challenges, and how they are related to poverty and inequality.

Full details for ECON 3910 - Health, Poverty, and Inequality: A Global Perspective

Analyzes the role of government in a free market economy. Topics include public goods, market failures, allocation mechanisms, optimal taxation, effects of taxation, and benefit-cost analysis. Current topics of an applied nature vary from semester to semester.

Full details for ECON 4260 - Public Finance: The Microeconomics of Government

This is an advanced course intended for upper level economics undergraduates who enjoy learning about and analyzing economic models. The course provides an introduction to the economic analysis of politics. Part I discusses collective choice and introduces some core ideas from social choice theory. Part II provides an overview of economic theories of political behavior. Part III discusses how political decisions are distorted away from those that would be made by the benevolent governments from public economics textbooks. Part IV offers economic perspectives on a number of contemporary issues in American politics.

Full details for ECON 4290 - Economic Analysis of Politics

This course introduces students to behavioral economics, a subfield of economics that incorporates insights from psychology and other social sciences into economics. The course reviews some of the standard assumptions made in economics, and examines evidence on how human behavior systematically departs from these assumptions. The course then investigates alternative models of human decision making, and assesses to what extent these alternative models help improve economic analyses.

Full details for ECON 4660 - Behavioral Economics

Full details for ECON 4997 - Cross-Cultural Work Experiences

Full details for ECON 4998 - Cross-Cultural Work Experiences

Independent study.

Full details for ECON 4999 - Independent Study in Economics

Topics in consumer and producer theory.

Full details for ECON 6090 - Microeconomic Theory I

Covers the following topics: static general equilibrium; intertemporal general equilibrium: infinitely lived agents models and overlapping generations models; welfare theorems; equivalence between sequential markets and Arrow-Debreu Markets; Ricardian proposition; Modigliani-Miller theorem; asset pricing; recursive competitive equilibrium; the Neoclassical Growth Model; calibration; and introduction to dynamic programming.

Full details for ECON 6130 - Macroeconomics I

Covers selected topics in matrix algebra (vector spaces, matrices, simultaneous linear equations, characteristic value problem), calculus of several variables (elementary real analysis, partial differentiation) convex analysis (convex sets, concave functions, quasi-concave functions), classical optimization theory (unconstrained maximization, constrained maximization), Kuhn-Tucker optimization theory (concave programming, quasi-concave programming).

Full details for ECON 6170 - Intermediate Mathematical Economics I

Gives the probabilistic and statistical background for meaningful application of econometric techniques. Topics include probability theory probability spaces, random variables, distributions, moments, transformations, conditional distributions, distribution theory and the multivariate normal distribution, convergence concepts, laws of large numbers, central limit theorems, Monte Carlo simulation; statistics: sample statistics, sufficiency, exponential families of distributions. Further topics in statistics are considered in ECON 6200.

Full details for ECON 6190 - Econometrics I

Focuses on empirical strategies to identify the causal effects of public policies and programs. The course uses problem sets based on real-world examples and data to examine techniques for analyzing nonexperimental data including control function approaches, matching methods, panel-data methods, selection models, instrumental variables, and regression-discontinuity methods. The emphasis throughout, however, is on the critical role of research design in facilitating credible causal inference. The course aids students in both learning to implement a variety of statistical tools using large data sets, and in learning to select which tools are best suited to a given research project.

Full details for ECON 6590 - Empirical Strategies for Policy Analysis

Social science research almost always combines empirical observation (data), the construction of concepts (language), and the logical analysis of the relations between observations and concepts (statistics).  This course examines the relations between these three dimensions as the analyst moves from one to the other both as practice and in the crafting of a formal summary of findings and argument. We will be particularly interested in the foundational assumptions that underpin the connections between empirical reality, language, and statistical analysis. While these foundational assumptions are often taken for granted by social scientists, they vary dramatically between social science disciplines.  The implicit contradiction between that variance and their doxic acceptance within disciplines will be a primary focus of the course.

Full details for ECON 6910 - Foundations of the Social Sciences

Independent study.

Full details for ECON 6990 - Readings in Economics

This course introduces econometric and machine learning methods that are useful for causal inference. Modern empirical research often encounters datasets with many covariates or observations. We start by evaluating the quality of standard estimators in the presence of large datasets, and then study when and how machine learning methods can be used or modified to improve the measurement of causal effects and the inference on estimated effects. The aim of the course is not to exhaust all machine learning methods, but to introduce a theoretic framework and related statistical tools that help research students develop independent research in econometric theory or applied econometrics. Topics include: (1) potential outcome model and treatment effect, (2) nonparametric regression with series estimator, (3) probability foundations for high dimensional data (concentration and maximal inequalities, uniform convergence), (4) estimation of high dimensional linear models with lasso and related methods, (5) estimation of high dimensional generalised linear models with L1 regularisation, (6) introduction to other machine learning methods such as neural networks, regression trees and random forests, (7) inference on semiparametric models with high dimensional components, orthogonalisation, de-biased machine learning, (8) other related topics, such as balancing methods, treatment choice problems, etc. Class slides will be circulated and students are expected to read theoretic and empirical research papers that involve machine learning methods.

Full details for ECON 7240 - Causal Inference and Machine Learning

Includes reading and discussion of selected topics in labor economics. Stresses applications of economic theory and econometrics to the labor market and human resource areas.

Full details for ECON 7420 - Seminar in Labor Economics I

Many subfields in economics study various types of bilateral relationships between agents (e.g., friendships, favor-exchange, lending, etc.) and how the structure of those relationships affect aggregate outcomes (e.g., diffusion of technology, growth, propagation of financial shocks). This course aims to (1) give students a broad overview of economic and social networks as studied by economists, (2) introduce students to a selection of modern (primarily theoretical) in networks, and (3) prepare students to start their own research in this area. While the focus of the course is on the theory of networks, good research in this area is often motivated by an attempt to explain or contend with patterns uncovered by modern empirical work. We will therefore also consider empirical papers in finance, development economics, labor, media, etc.

Full details for ECON 7540 - Economics of Networks: Theory

Graduate students and the instructor present draft research proposals, papers, and preliminary thesis results for group review and discussion. Students who actively participate by offering written and oral comments on others' work receive 1 credit. Students who also present their own proposal or paper receive 2 credits. Presentations last 75 minutes and thus represent a substantial investment of time. Students who present a second proposal or paper receive 3 credits.

Full details for ECON 7650 - Development Microeconomics Graduate Research Seminar

This course will provide a selective overview of topics at the cutting-edge of academic research and policy debates about the international monetary and financial system. Main areas will include the effects of financial globalization on growth, volatility, and the transmission of business cycles, as well as the determinants of capital flows and exchange rates. The course will cover topics at the intersection of international finance and macroeconomics, with particular emphasis on the implications for monetary policy and financial regulation. New research related to Fintech, cryptocurrencies, and central bank digital currencies will also be covered. This course is intended for advanced Ph.D. students, especially those in search of thesis topics, and will require extensive student involvement in preparing research proposals and critiques of existing literature. Students will develop their own research ideas during the course and are required to write a substantive research paper.

Full details for ECON 7670 - Topics in International Finance

This course introduces graduate students to the main concepts and ideas of law and economics, founded on elementary game theory. These ideas are then applied to contemporary policy concerns, from promoting economic development and designing welfare interventions in developing countries, to controlling corruption and financial fraud. The defining feature of the course is the structuring of these topics within a common conceptual framework, and training students to develop these ideas further and apply them to new research questions.

Full details for ECON 7740 - Law and Economics: A Game-Theoretic Approach

Research workshop featuring guest lecturers.

Full details for ECON 7841 - Econometrics Workshop

Research workshop featuring guest lecturers.

Full details for ECON 7842 - Microeconomic Theory Workshop

Research workshop featuring guest lecturers.

Full details for ECON 7843 - Industrial Organization Workshop

Research workshop featuring guests lecturers. Presentations of completed papers and work in progress by faculty members, advanced graduate students, and speakers from other universities. Focuses on the formulation, design, and execution of dissertations.

Full details for ECON 7845 - Workshop in Labor Economics

Research workshop featuring guest lecturers.

Full details for ECON 7846 - S.C. Tsiang Macroeconomics Workshop

Research workshop featuring guest lecturers.

Full details for ECON 7847 - Development Workshop

Research workshop featuring guest lecturers.

Full details for ECON 7848 - Public Economics Workshop

Research workshop featuring guest lecturers.

Full details for ECON 7849 - Behavioral Economics Workshop

Ph.D. students in the Field of Economics are required to take this year-long research seminar, and receive a grade of Satisfactory, in order to remain in good standing in the Ph.D. program. Students present and discuss each second-year paper, which must be completed before the semester opens and Economics 7850 meets for the first time. Students also present at least two additional papers or paper plans. These are intended to be part of the core of the student's thesis proposal, which must be given as part of the student's A Exam prior to the start of the fourth year of graduate study in the economics Ph.D. program. Economics 7851 ends with a mini-conference, attended by faculty and other Ph.D. students, in which each student makes a formal presentation in standard economics conference format, and each student discusses one of these presentations. Professional writing and presentation coaching is also provided.

Full details for ECON 7850 - Third Year Research Seminar