London School of Economics

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.

Students are introduced to human cognition and behavior, addressing foundational topics in psychological science. These foundational topics include key concepts such as evolution, genetics, neuroscience, human evolutionary biology and anthropology, and specific topics, such as perception, memory, heuristics and biases, decision-making, child development, psychopathology, personality and individual differences, emotion, attraction and sexuality, cross-cultural differences, social relations, stereotypes and prejudice, norms and attitudes, social learning, social influence and persuasion, and group processes. The course offers an integrated perspective on these topics, investigating the evolution and variation in human psychology over time, across cultures, and over the lifespan. Students learn the history of the study of humans and human psychology, offering students the historical context to trends in research. 

The objective of the course is to provide students with insights from economic theory which are relevant to applications in managerial decision making. The emphasis is on applying microeconomics ideas to solve problems. Topics include consumer theory, production, market structure, monopoly, oligopoly, pricing, game theory, bargaining, auctions, and asymmetric information.

This course is concerned with economic geography. In particular we use ideas from International Trade, International Economics, Development and Regional Economics to talk about the location of economic activity across space and the consequences of uneven location. This course is concerned with two fundamental questions: 1) what determines the distribution of production and trade across countries and regions? 2) which are the implications for economic development and inequalities? To answer these questions, students are introduced to international trade theories, their mechanisms and implications for trade patterns. In parallel, this course provides students with a review of the main empirical studies testing for those theories and documenting the implications of trade liberalization for economic development and income inequalities. Armed with these theories and empirical facts, the course critically evaluates current trade policy disputes.

The course examines the role of power and politics in international economic relations. Besides international structural factors, it emphasizes the role of domestic political interests and their influence over foreign economic policies. Major approaches covered include historical views on international political economy, and contemporary systemic theories of international cooperation, interest groups politics, ideas and institutions. The course provides an overview and explanation of the international monetary and trade systems since 1944. It also discusses current debates on trade, monetary policy, the political roots of financial crises, globalization and the retreat of the state, and environmental protection.