London School of Economics

The course gradually moves from the foundational principles of Behavioral Science, to the practical applications based on those principles through three interlinked blocks. Students are introduced to dual-processing models of human behavior to highlight the role of the environment in shaping decisions. They consider the Dual System approach, heuristics and biases, and the influence of time, risk, and social preferences. The course delves into the science of happiness by introducing the main accounts of subjective wellbeing, how it is conceptualized and measured and its implications for policy and other contexts. Finally, the course introduces the Mindspace framework by teaching how various techniques from Behavioral Economics (incentives, commitments, defaults), Social Psychology (ego, messenger and social norms), and Cognitive Psychology (priming, affect) can be used to shape behavior. 

This course provides an examination of the cultural frameworks and social aspects of kinship systems, gender roles, personhood and human sexuality, analyzed through ethnographic examples from a diverse range of settings. It aims to equip students with the analytical tools to engage in theoretical debates concerning core concepts such as kinship, marriage, gender, sex, the person, and the relationship between nature and culture, as well as exploring how the experiences of kinship, sex and gender vary according to the regimes of politics, law and materiality in which they are embedded. The course charts the history of anthropological debates on kinship, relatedness, sex and gender, and familiarizes students with a range of contemporary approaches to these themes, placing ethnographic materials into a critical dialogue with recent developments in feminist theory, queer theory, the anthropology of colonialism, cognitive science, and psychoanalysis.

We use language all the time to express our thoughts and understand others. But how does language work? Key questions covered in this course include: how do names refer to an object? Do words mean whatever we intend or use them to mean? What role does convention play in fixing meanings? Are our terms vague, or precise? Can a person have a private language? How do we communicate beyond the literal? What are speech acts and are they available to everyone in our society? All of these questions are of interest in their own right, and also have applications to further issues in philosophy and beyond.

In this course, students explore ten of the “big questions”: What do I know? What is consciousness? Who am I, and do I exist? Do I have free will? Does God exist? What are space and time? What are numbers? What should I do? What is justice? What is the meaning of life? To find answers to these questions, students learn essential skills of a philosopher: first, reading philosophical texts, focusing on how to extract and present a philosophical thesis and argument in a clear, logical way; and second, practicing creative, critical thinking and impromptu discussions by participating in philosophical discourse with peers. Students also learn to write philosophical arguments of their own in essay-form.

This course reviews fundamental concepts in economic theory and presents some of its most successful applications. The first part of the course consists of an introduction to auction theory. Auctions have been widely used to allocate spectrum licenses, drilling rights or central bank lending against collateral; their design is therefore of immediate practical concern. The theory, drawing on mechanism design, allows us to analyze what makes auctions desirable, how different formats compare, and tackle issues such as strategic entry, collusive behavior, or allocative externalities. The course is strictly theoretical and cover fundamental issues, most importantly the revenue equivalence theorem. From here students embark on an eclectic tour, covering issues relating to competition policy and auction design, and exploring connections with competitive markets and nonlinear pricing. The second part of the course surveys concepts in non-cooperative game theory and introduces students to game theoretic modeling in economics. After setting up the primitives of the game theory framework, different solution concepts are analyzed with an emphasis on economic applications including bargaining, voting, communication, and matching.

The course introduces students to the fundamental principles of management accounting, financial management, and financial institutions. Students learn how accounting information can be used by managers to make crucial decisions, such as pricing of products or services, discontinuing or offering new products, and expanding the product/service range or investing in new product development.  Students are introduced to various topics in management accounting and financial management, including cost behavior, cost-volume-profit analysis, costing systems, budgeting, variance analysis, performance measurement, and capital budgeting. As the course progresses, students are introduced to some key concepts in financial management, such as the role of financial markets and financial institutions, capital structure, and risk. The course provides students with a solid foundation in management accounting and financial management, allowing them to apply their knowledge in real-world situations.

This course offers an introduction to international trade theory and develops the main tools for trade policy analysis. Students start by studying the patterns of trade distinguishing between inter-industry and intra-industry trade flows. They then proceed to an in-depth analysis of the causes and the effects of those flows based on the concepts of absolute and comparative advantage, relative factor abundance and relative factor intensity, increasing returns to scale and imperfect competition. Finally, they discuss the gains and losses from trade, their distribution among people and firms, and their implications for the debate on trade liberalization versus protectionism

This an intermediate-level course in macroeconomics. Students learn about money and inflation, and how central banks can use monetary policy to control inflation. Students study business cycles - booms and recessions - and the potential role for fiscal and monetary policy in stabilizing the economy. Students learn about the interaction between the economy and financial markets and banks, especially in times of crisis. Students also study the international aspects of macroeconomics arising from trade in goods and financial assets with the rest of the world. The class applies the tools developed in the course to historical and contemporary events.

Urban economics is concerned with the spatial form of cities and the division of national economic activity into cities, both at a point in time and over time.  Three fundamental questions are: Why are economic activities within a country so unequally distributed across space? Why do cities (and agglomerations of firms and workers) emerge and in what locations? How and why are economic activities within cities unequally distributed in general and between the city center and the suburbs?

This course broadens, and selectively deepens, students' understanding of finance, building on their existing knowledge of financial economics. The course covers a broad range of topics, with both a theoretical and an empirical emphasis. These include topics in investments and performance evaluation and international finance. The first component provides students with a way of thinking about investment decisions by examining the empirical behavior of security prices. Students study the empirical evidence of the CAPM and other asset pricing models, and then analyze different tests of market efficiency focusing on event studies and investment anomalies. They also study the main empirical findings in behavioral finance. They learn how to measure the performance of a portfolio manager and to attribute it to different types of skill. Finally, this section of the course introduces the foundations of international finance and explores issues related to international portfolio management.