London School of Economics

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.

The course consists of three parts: financial accounting (for external reporting), management accounting (for internal decision making), and finance (to provide funding).
 

The course discusses big picture questions about the purpose and defensibility of law—for example, scrutinizing the obligation to obey the law, the justification of punishment, and the circumstances in which we can engage in civil disobedience. The course examine a variety of philosophically interesting legal questions. An indicative list includes: When should a court consider something proven? How should the law use algorithms? Should we defer to juries or professional judges? Does it make sense to treat a corporation as morally responsible? Throughout the course, students explore the connection between legal philosophy and other areas of philosophy—especially moral philosophy, political philosophy, and epistemology.  

The course provides a precise and accurate treatment of introductory probability theory, statistical ideas, methods, and techniques.  Topics covered are data visualization and descriptive statistics, probability theory, random variables, common distributions of random variables, multivariate random variables, sampling distributions of statistics, point estimation, interval estimation, hypothesis testing, analysis of variance (ANOVA), linear regression, nonparametric tests, goodness-of-fit, and independence tests. 

The course offers critical reflection on the design and evaluation of public policies from the perspective of moral and political philosophy. To this end, students learn a range of theories and concepts that are used in policy evaluation. They evaluate them by focusing on specific policy proposals. 

The course analyses accounting practices and processes from the point of view of investors. The course examines revenue recognition, tangible and intangible assets, the reporting of financial instruments, off-balance-sheet accounting, stock-based compensation, as well as, issues related to the differential approaches to measurement including historical cost and fair values. However, the exact composition of the topics may vary from year to year driven by the latest developments in financial reporting, standard-setting and related debates. The course enhances students’ understanding of contemporary issues in financial accounting. Throughout the course, taken-for-granted “wisdoms” are evaluated and challenged.