Course Information

Four review courses are offered during the summer orientation session: Mathematics, Microeconomics, Macroeconomics and Econometrics. Basic tools, concepts and methods in each area needed for graduate study in Economics are covered. These courses are required for all MA and Ph.D. students. NON-CREDIT.

This course and Economics 9602B are the required Ph.D. microeconomics courses. Economics 9601A is a rigorous and self-contained introduction to modern economic theory and practice. The course is divided into two parts—non-strategic and strategic environments. In the non-strategic portion, the theory of partial competitive equilibrium is developed. In the strategic portion, attention is directed towards both normal and extensive form games, including repeated and anonymous sequential games, and refinements of sequential equilibrium. Both sections emphasize applications and extensions to general environments. Mathematics beyond Economics 9600 is developed as required.

This course is the second part of the first-year PhD microeconomics sequence. The main topics covered by the course are: welfare and social choice theory; choice under uncertainty including expected utility, risk attitudes, and information structures; non-cooperative game theory including static, dynamic, and Bayesian games; information design; and mechanism design with and without transfers.

This course covers dynamic general equilibrium theory, commonly used market structures for dynamic economies, recursive tools and the application of these tools to examine long run growth, business cycles, asset pricing and government policy.

Economics 9604B is a continuation of Economics 9603A. Topics may include growth, human capital, time consistency and policy, dynamic programming, inequality and consumption smoothing, financial intermediation, optimal contracts, organization of production, real business cycle theory, monetary economics, and the theory of unemployment.

This course and Economics 9606B are the required Ph.D. econometrics courses. Economics 9605A provides a thorough introduction to the probability and statistical theory which form a basis for modern econometrics and econometric theory. It covers an axiomatic approach to probability theory, a review of useful statistical distributions and their properties, and a careful treatment of asymptotic theory--laws of large numbers and central limit theorems. The statistical theory is introduced from the economist's perspective with special emphasis on regression analysis.

This a first core course in Econometrics in the first-year Ph.D. program.  It covers the main estimation methods used with cross-sectional data and some methods used in the time-series and panel data contexts. First, we cover a general theory of extremum estimators. Next, we show how this unified theory can be applied for the analysis of a broad set of estimators: least squares estimators, maximum likelihood estimators, and generalized method of moments estimators.  We then proceed with a detailed discussion of hypothesis testing: finite sample and asymptotic properties of different test statistics. Finally, we cover dependencies as one would face with time-series or panel data. To prepare students for future empirical work the home assignments contain exercises with field or simulated data. These exercises require the use of modern computer packages (e.g., Matlab, Julia, Python).

The aim of this course is to familiarize the students with some mathematical techniques employed in economic theory.  The topics covered include static optimization, dynamic programming, convex analysis and fixed-point theorems.

The focus of this course is on causality, identification, econometrics, counterfactual analysis and numerical methods as tools to understand empirical work in Economics. This class will focus on how to think about the application of these concepts and on the use of these computational methods. The Roy model will be used to introduce counterfactual analysis and different methods available to generate these counterfactuals. Discussion will focus on estimation, identification, discrete choice, treatment effects, and structural models. Students will be introduced to the computational methods available and how to implement these methods as opposed to just learning about them and their properties.

This is an advanced topics course mainly on auction theory and mechanism design, as well as global games and political economy. The course consists of lectures on the essential background and class discussions and student presentations on works at the frontier of each topic area. Each student will write referee reports and give presentations, including a research proposal presentation at the end.

This course focuses on three areas of microeconomic theory: foundations of non-cooperative game theory, mechanism design, and matching theory. The part on non-cooperative game theory is devoted to the properties, robustness, epistemic foundations, and applications of several basic solution concepts. The part on mechanism design will review several classical results for general environments and for quasi-linear environments, and highlight a few current developments in the field. The part on matching theory will cover one-to-one and one-to-many matching models and its extensions, as well as matching in large economies.

The purpose of this course is to study topics in macroeconomics which are likely to generate interesting research ideas. These topics may include, among others, the theory of financial intermediation, international trade and finance, dynamic contracts, growth and development, economics of the family, empirical macroeconomics, monetary theory, and computational issues.

These courses are designed to give students a clear understanding of some of the more recent developments in both theoretical and applied econometrics. The topics to be covered will reflect the research interests of the faculty as well as covering the essentials of some of the more widely used techniques and inference.

The purpose of this course is to examine economic inequality and poverty at the global level. Much has been learned but there is a lot still to discover. The course will point to areas where further investigation is needed and students will be encouraged to dig into those areas. Topics covered will include methods of inequality measurement; estimation of the global distributions of income and wealth and poverty level; global inequality trends over time; what is happening in the upper tail (millionaires and billionaires); income and wealth mobility; and modeling global processes affecting inequality. The emphasis will be on trends and phenomena affecting regions, types of countries, or the whole world, rather than on aspects that affect only individual countries.

The aim of this course is to allow students to develop the knowledge required for formulating and numerically solving dynamic programming problems to address research questions in macroeconomics, labor economics and industrial organization. 

This is an advanced PhD course in monetary economics, financial economics, and macro. Prerequisite is Economics 9604.

This course examines how to answer major public policy questions in health and education using empirical research, with a focus on structural microeconometric work. This course also studies research in empirical contracts (i.e., empirical research about moral hazard and adverse selection models), again with a special application to education and health economics, as well as insurance markets more generally.

In this course, we will cover a variety of topics in Applied Econometrics that are not covered in standard courses. In particular, I will cover Bayesian Estimation methods and philosophy, CCP estimators and Errors in variables/factor models.

The goal of this course is to explore the application of microeconomic analysis to issues of development in poor countries. Household behaviour and rural institutions will be studied using a variety of methodological approaches. The course will cover the neoclassical agricultural household model and criticisms of that model, human capital, the structure of rural factor markets (concentrating on the effects of risk and information and enforcement problems), general equilibrium analyses of village economies, household savings and investment, issues of health and nutrition, technological innovation, institutions, public services and local political economy.

This course provides an introduction to public economics. It covers both theoretical and empirical work, with a focus on local public good provision, education, and health.

The aim of this course is to introduce current research and methods used in the study of empirical questions in Industrial Organization. A variety of topics and methods will be covered in order to expose the types of questions being studied and methods being used in Industrial Organization. There is an emphasis on structural techniques. As will become apparent, the applicability of these techniques extends to questions outside of Industrial Organization to Labor, Trade, and Public Economics.

This course explores firm and industry behavior with an emphasis on markets characterized by imperfect competition. It is primarily concerned with the causes and consequences of market power, the strategic behavior of firms, and the economic performance of markets. Each topic will be dealt with its relevance to competition policy, and economic regulation. Econ9635 is theoretical, while Econ9634 focused on empirical methods.

This course examines the historical evolution of the financial and monetary system (with a focus on the past 200 years in Western countries), with a focus on financial crises.  Financial crises are a recurrent feature since (at least) the industrial revolution. This course examines several of the major bubbles, financial crises, banking panics and sovereign defaults, with particular focus on the Interwar period (especially the Great Depression) and the recent Financial Crisis.  Current economic theory on financial crises and default is employed to examine these historical episodes, as well as to analyze the economic forces driving financial innovation and the evolution of financial and monetary systems. The course draws on historical experience as well as economic theory to examine the trade-offs associated with alternative policies which seek to reduce the likelihood or to mitigate the economic impact of crises.

The course begins by covering the basic areas of labour economics--supply, demand and wage and employment determination. The second half focuses on a selection of sub-topics of interest to students in the course.

This course focuses on understanding inequality in the labour market and policies designed to address concerns about inequality.  The course will explore changes in wages and earnings over the lifecycle as well as differences across individuals.  Alternative theories of wage growth and differences will be discussed along with their empirical implications, emphasizing the link between economic theory and empirical analysis.

The focus of this course is search theory and estimation.  Job search theory has been used to study the determinants of unemployment and job spell durations, labour market transitions and wages.  This course begins by examining the partial equilibrium search model.  However, most of the course is on equilibrium models of the labour market including wage posting models and bilateral bargaining models.  Special attention is paid to the structural estimation of such models, and new theoretical extensions of the model to better match observed data.

This course covers topics in international trade and international macroeconomics. The first half of the course focuses on static models of international trade and their quantitative predictions. The second half addresses open-economy macroeconomics, starting with benchmark international real business cycle models, and then covering extensions to include financial and pricing frictions. Trade and international macro are typically treated as separate fields, but the recent literature has been blurring the boundary. This course covers papers that use dynamic models to understand trade flows better, and also papers that use trade theory to answer international macro questions. The objectives of the class are to familiarize students with recent work and to prepare them to start their own research in these areas.

Students are provided with a firm understanding of the econometric methods used in empirical finance research. The course covers discrete time as well as continuous time models; markets for stocks, bonds, interest rates, and options; corporate finance and event studies; market microstructure; tests of asset pricing and option pricing models in discrete and continuous time; multivariate regression analysis, generalized method of moments, efficient method of moments, maximum likelihood, nonparametric methods, cross-sectional, time series and panel methods; cointegration, autoregressive conditional heteroskedasticity (ARCH) and GARCH (generalized ARCH); diffusion models; implied, realized and stochastic volatility, forecasting, filtering; arbitrage and equilibrium models.

This course provides an introduction to the basic tools and concepts of international financial management. It focuses on the risks and rewards facing the firm operating in global markets. The course is designed to make students aware of the unique forms of risk that are encountered in international financial markets, to provide an introduction to instruments and markets that are used in international transactions, and to make students understand how to design appropriate hedges for given international business problems. Topics to be discussed include foreign exchange markets, international financial markets, currency derivative contracts, risk management, investment decisions, exchange rate systems, and international financial crises affecting the global capital markets.

In the education context, the class will focus on helping students gain a variety of general research skills. As some examples, the class will: 1) explore the relationship between structural and non-structural applied work, 2) discuss issues related to the process of finding research topics, 3) allow students to practice motivating and defending research ideas, 4) allow students to work together through the early part of a research project. The topics studied will be, in large part, related to educational attainment.

This course is an introduction to the economics of financial intermediation and regulation. Topics include an introduction to economic theories of banks and the relationship of financial intermediaries to economic fluctuations. In addition, the course will review the economic theory of financial and banking regulation.

This is a basic course in time series and stochastic processes. It involves a detailed discussion of linear and non-linear as well as stationary and non-stationary time series models, all of which are in discrete time. The course then moves to continuous time models with some general comments on stochastic processes along with detailed results on Poisson processes and Brownian Motion. This is followed by an introduction to stochastic calculus with applications in finance. The course is aimed at preparing students who may wish to pursue research in financial econometrics.

Political Economy is generally concerned with the application of modeling and empirical methodologies familiar to economists to problems associated with political science: voting, electoral systems, the structure of legislatures, campaign financing and the transmission and impact of information about candidates parties and policies on legislative and electoral outcomes.

This course provides an introduction to risk Management in financial firms. Key topics covered in this course include: What is Risk? Risk adjusted value, risk tolerance and risk neutral preferences, definition and measurement of different types of risk: accounting risk, economic risk, environmental risk, financial risk, operational risk, reputational risk, technological risk etc. Financial risk: capital market risk, liquidity risk, portfolio management, asset liability management, risk modelling, risk budgeting, scenario analysis, stress testing and Value-at-Risk, regulation, Basel III, Solvency II, Dodd-Frank, Central Banks, FSA etc., Applications.

This workshop aims to give students some experience in how economics is applied to various research questions. Classes feature our own faculty describing their own broad approaches to applying economics in their research, as well as classes on how to identify a promising research project and classes on how to motivate a research project in both written and oral presentations. Students are matched to faculty members in their research area for one-on-one mentoring through the initial stages of a research project. A research paper (approximately 20 pages in length) is required. 

9692L. PhD Research Workshop

The focus of these courses is on improving a student’s oral and written communication skills through examining, critically evaluating, and constructively commenting on the presentations and written work of others. In the fall term, attendance at, and participation in, workshops, written reports, and reviews of other’s work are key requirements of this course. In the winter term, giving practice and formal presentations, receiving feedback on written work, and providing feedback to others on their presentations and written work are key requirements.

The focus of these courses is on improving a student’s oral and written communication skills through examining, critically evaluating, and constructively commenting on the presentations and written work of others. In the fall term, attendance at, and participation in, workshops, written reports, and reviews of other’s work are key requirements of this course. In the winter term, giving practice and formal presentations, receiving feedback on written work, and providing feedback to others on their presentations and written work are key requirements.