London School of Economics

The 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 corporate finance, investments and performance evaluation, and international finance. The course consists of two interchangeable ten-week components, one on investments and international finance, and the other on corporate finance.

This course focuses on derivatives, with a particular emphasis on equity derivatives (standard call and put options, exotic options), futures and forward contracts, and interest rate derivatives (swaps, caps and floors, swaptions). It systematically addresses three basic questions: how do these products work, i.e. what are their payoffs? How can they be used, for hedging purposes or as part of trading strategies? And above all: how are they priced? The course emphasises a small number of powerful ideas: absence of arbitrage, replication, and risk-neutral pricing. These are typically introduced in the context of discrete-time models, but the course also covers some well-known continuous-time models, starting with a comprehensive treatment of the Black-Scholes model. The level of mathematics is appropriate for third-year students with a solid quantitative background.

The course examines the successes and failures of British business and industry, with an emphasis on the post-World War II period. It assesses many of the hypotheses on why the UK economy grew more slowly than other OECD nations during this period. Explanations of relative economic decline are examined in the context of comparisons with other European nations and with the US, Japan and more recently China. The course is organized to combine major economic and political themes, such as de-industrialization, globalization, education and training, management organization and practices, labor relations, and Britain’s relationship with the EEC/EU, with case studies of industries as diverse as textiles, motors, banking, pharmaceuticals, and steel. By interacting themes and case studies, students get a sense of how national policies can affect business opportunities, and how governments can both aid and harm business. The impact of government policies such as nationalization/privatization, regional policy and competition are also examined in this context. The primary focus is on the post-World War II period, including current changes in performance, but the historical roots of Britain's recent performance are also considered.

This course is an introduction to economic principles in the analysis of environmental change and natural resource use and in designing appropriate policy responses. The first part of the course primarily covers the concepts and tools of environmental and resource economics, such as the evaluation of regulatory and market-based instruments in controlling pollution; moral suasion and voluntary regulation; the economics of renewable resources (e.g. fisheries); the economics of non-renewable resources (e.g., fossil fuels and minerals). The second part applies these concepts and tools to provide an economic perspective on real-world policy issues. Topics covered include the following: cost-benefit analysis and environmental valuation; stated and revealed preferences methods (and some behavioral considerations); sustainable development; biodiversity; climate change; energy; directed technological change and green innovation; health and the environment.

This course provides an introduction to selected themes in the anthropology of the region in the Southwest Pacific Ocean known as Melanesia. It gives students a grounding in the contemporary anthropology of the region, primarily through a close reading of three book-length ethnographies. The three ethnographies, which are all new since 2013, are Christopher Wright's THE ECHO OF THINGS, an account of what photography means to people in the western Solomon Islands; Alice Street's BIOMEDICINE IN AN UNSTABLE PLACE, an analysis of how persons and diseases are made visible or invisible in a hospital on the north coast of Papua New Guinea; and Maggie Wilson’s A TRUE CHILD OF PAPUA NEW GUINEA (edited by Rosita Henry), the part-memoir/part-"ethnographic biography" of a woman who lived between "two worlds," that of her mother, a New Guinea Highlander, and that of her father, an Australian colonist. These ethnographies not only provide students with focused accounts of three very different contexts in Melanesia, they also address histories, dynamics, and concerns familiar to people living throughout the region. Engagement with these three books is enhanced and supplemented by other readings (including works by Pacific Islanders), ethnographic films, and a visit to the British Museum.

This course examines normative and conceptual theories of politics from a global, transhistorical perspective. Students go beyond current theories of “decolonization” to consider how conversations about political life can be and have been transformed on the basis of distinctive concerns that emerge from specific times and places, marked by different levels of affluence, historical connections (or the lack thereof), textual or oral heritages, as well as the experience of imperialism. The course brings these diverse sources into a meaningful discussion about the political questions that they pose, both on their own and in comparison with others. 
 

The course covers some of the most prominent tools in modelling and simulation. Both deterministic and stochastic models are covered. These include mathematical optimization, the application of sophisticated mathematical methods to make optimal decisions, and simulation, the playing-out of real-life scenarios in a (computer-based) modelling environment. Topics may include formulation of management problems using linear/nonlinear and network models (these could include binary, integer, convex, and stochastic programming models) as well as solving these problems and analyzing the solutions; generating random variables using Monte Carlo simulation; discrete event simulation; variance reduction techniques; Markov Chain Monte Carlo methods. The course teaches students to use modelling and simulation computer packages.

This course covers basic concepts of database management systems, including relational and other types of database management systems. The topics covered include basic concepts of the relational model, creating and modifying relations using Structured Query Language (SQL), basic SQL queries using SELECT operator, nested queries, aggregate operators such as GROUP BY, integrity constraints and relations, views, application development using JDBC, Internet protocols such as HTTP and XML, storage and indexing, tree-structured indexing using B+ trees, hash-based indexing, query evaluation and algorithms for relational operations, external sorting, transaction management and concurrency, database schema and normal forms, and overview of NoSQL databases such as key-value stores, document, and graph databases. The course demonstrates how various theoretical principles are implemented in practice in a database management system, such as MySQL, SQLite and PostgreSQL.

This course is divided into two sections introducing recent developments in economic theory and policy analysis. The first half of the course covers economic policy in the global economy. Students study the causes and consequences of international economic integration, focusing on how globalization affects the trade-offs that shape policy. Both theoretical and empirical analyses will be considered. Key topics include international trade, capital flows, migration, technology diffusion, taxation in the global economy, and the relationship between globalization and national sovereignty.

The course explores the economic history of the Middle East and North Africa (MENA). Many, if not most, of MENA’s contemporary problems cannot be understood without a deep understanding of its history, not only during the postcolonial period, but also during the precolonial and colonial periods. The course first introduces students to the definition of the MENA region, and the broad trends in its history since antiquity. It then examines specific themes that are of great importance for understanding the economic history of the region, such as: how most of MENA’s population became Muslims in the Middle Ages? What do we know about MENA’s economic performance vis-à-vis Europe in the long run? How did “Islamic” institutions emerge? What legal rights did people have over land and labor? Students also discuss state-led development, inequality, education, socioeconomic inequality across ethnoreligious groups, and the demographic transition. Throughout the course, students focus on the view from below, examining the living conditions, preferences, and behavior of local populations, rather than taking a macroeconomic perspective that studies MENA only in comparison to Europe. Students also emphasize the recent developments in MENA economic history based on novel data sources, including MENA local archives, papyrology, medieval chronicles, literary sources, and archeology. In terms of methods, the course will draw upon both qualitative and quantitative approaches to history, employing economic theory, econometric methods, novel data sources, and solid historical evidence.