Economics

Corporate finance deals with the financing and investment decisions made by the management of companies in the pursuit of shareholder wealth maximization. The course gives a broad overview of important issues in corporate finance and combines insights from economics, business, and psychology. The economic side of corporate finance deals with the maximization of shareholder wealth. To do so, managers aim at securing the greatest possible return in exchange for accepting the smallest amount of risk. For instance, a company can finance itself by borrowing money from banks, by issuing bonds or through the stock market. These types of decisions influence the expected return and risk of the company. Traditional economics assumes that managers and investors are rational self-interested people. However, there is a large body of evidence from social psychology and behavioral economics that people often act irrationally and behave pro-socially by taking the social impact of decisions into account. The course also shows how decision making biases influence managers and investors in their financial decisions and how social preferences impact factors such as corporate social responsibility. The course is largely based on real life cases that we discuss in an interactive manner. Students debate on topics such as “should CEO bonuses be reduced?” and “is it important for firms to put corporate social responsibility high on their agenda?”

This course first introduces the nature and concept of economic development as well as some stylized facts of development. It also introduces several important theories and models of economic development. The second part of the course focuses more on specific issues such as income distribution, population, human capital, development policy making, and international trade. For each subject, empirical analysis and case studies are provided to enhance the understanding of students. Basically, this course relies on lectures. However, students are encouraged to join discussions and debate for each subject. Also, students form several groups, and each group prepares for a presentation that is made in the end of the semester. When time is allowed, several special lectures are arranged with invited speakers. 

Prerequisites: Principles of Economics I and II

This course introduces students to basic principles of Macroeconomics and their applications to business. In addition to covering basic economic principles, the course will expose students to how the various principles apply to individual and business decision making. Topics to be covered include measurement of economic activity at the macroeconomic level, gross domestic product and related concepts, inflation, unemployment, fiscal and monetary policy.

This course focuses on the analysis, tools, and knowledge of microeconomics for business. The course applies economics to business issues, and each topic is introduced assuming no previous knowledge of the subject. Examples are taken from the real world to show how economic analysis and models can be used to understand the different parts of business and how policy has been used to intervene in the working of the economy.

The rise of China and India, along with other big emerging economies in Africa, Asia, and Latin America, has shifted the focus of future corporate governance research and reforms to the way these economies finance and govern their companies. This course examines in detail the various typologies, systems, and models of corporate governance in emerging economies, and identifies the key drivers of corporate governance evolution in these countries. A focus of the course is to look at issues of convergence to and/or divergence from the Anglo-Saxon model of corporate governance and how such issues are reshaping our understanding of the underlying goals and assumptions of future corporate governance research and reforms in these economies.

In this course the correlation between economics and law are examined by analyzing the main fields of law using the economic notions and methods studied so far. The literature of law and economics examines the problems related to incentives, cost of transaction, and risk that form the basis of legislation and the extent to which individual legal rules produce the desired effect. The following fields of law are discussed in particular: property law, contract law, liability law, procedural law and criminal law. Through this course students are able to analyze legal issues by means of microeconomic theoretic tools (incentive, cost of transaction and risk analysis) and develop policy based on insights derived from the domain where economics and law coincide. Students are expected to have basic knowledge of economics at the level of the Microeconomics and Institutions or Principles of Microeconomics.

This course is the additional work for the course : "THE WORLD ECONOMY IN THE 20TH AND 21ST CENTURY". This course, while giving an outline of global economic developments over the recent past and their implications in today's world, focuses on key moments and areas in the history of the twentieth century, sometimes referred to as “the short twentieth century,” starting in 1914 and ending in 1989. This course covers through the year 2000.

This course offers an exploration of the intellectual framework or public economics. The course discusses questions including should we encourage government intervention in the economy and on what grounds, what are the different instruments the government can use in order to achieve its goals and what should these goals be. The course builds on robust theoretical and empirical arguments, together with sound institutional analyses, in order to achieve an in-depth understanding of government reasons to intervene and ways of intervention. The course examines topics including government expenditure, deficit, and debt; education; social and health insurance; pension systems; taxation and progressivity; taxation incidence; optimal taxation; income taxation; consumption taxation; and inequality and redistribution. Students complete a written midterm and written final exam.