France

This pre-semester course examines both the lexicon and the syntax of French grammar, focusing on tenses, logical connectors, complex sentences, and argumentation. French academic writing techniques are explored throughout the course. In lectures and with examples and practice, emphasis is placed on summarizing, organizing, outlining, commentary, textual analysis, and forms of dissertation (compositions and term papers). The course also includes training in note-taking skills, using listening exercises with oral follow-up and written reports, training in the delivery of oral reports, and training in methods of debate. 

This course covers global wine economics and the economy of sparkling wines and champagne. Topics include production potential, shipments and sales, strategies and economic models, marketing strategy and packaging, and the future of the industry.

This course explores the theory and practice of market design. Economists study market mechanisms, and are also involved in the design of markets. Key examples include auctions to sell electricity, radio spectrum, or procurement contracts; mechanisms to sell internet advertising; online marketplaces; algorithms to match candidates to jobs, students to schools, or allocate courses to students; organ exchange systems. The field of market design studies how to choose the rules of mechanisms that solve such allocation problems, or how to organize successful marketplaces. It builds on the tools of game theory and mechanism design. This course explains the underlying theory in an intuitive way, and discusses actual designs. The goal is to understand why some market institutions succeed and other fail. The course is based on lectures to expose the theory, and class discussion of applications.