Economics

• -  Students will gain a basic structure about quantitative finance, learn the definition and application of various derivatives, and how to apply binomial trees to price financial derivatives.

• -  Students will learn trading strategies involving call and put options.

• -  Students will master how to apply risk measures such as Value at Risk and Expected Shortfall in risk management framework.

This course covers forwards, futures, swaps, and options. In Part I, students will have good knowledge of how forwards, futures and swaps work, how they are used, and how they are priced. In Part II, we will introduce the mechanics of option markets, properties of stock options, options on stock indices and currencies as well as various types of exotic options. In Part III, theories about binomial trees, Wiener processes, Ito’s Lemma, Black-Scholes-Merton Model will be further illustrated, and market risk measures will be covered.

Unlike other major courses for Economics, this course equips students who are not majoring in economics with a deep, systematic understanding of current economic issues. Hence we deal with the current economic issues in the class. Throughout the course, students engage in a series of discussions on economic issues from economic articles in newspapers, periodicals or economic stories in novels.

This course takes students on a journey of discovery and wider understanding, when thinking about complex sustainable development challenges. The focus is on the global problems of climate change and social inequalities, as well as the societal responses to these, particularly from an economics lens. Contrary to the conventional way of teaching economics, the course pursues a tour-de-force of diverse and rich economic perspectives, rather than following standard textbooks and their typical insistence on a particular strand of economic thinking. The course is problem-oriented with special attention given to critical thinking, differing views, and practical and policy implications. The emphasis is first on observed empirics and factual trends concerning the respective sustainability provocations, before diving into the explanatory body of pluralist economics and wide range of policy actions. Moreover, the course boosts students’ creativity and imagination, engages participants, and allows for plenty of interaction. It also proposes a novel, experimental element to the teaching method by connecting economic thinking with the world of arts and culture to illustrate a point more vividly,

This course introduces the fundamental principles of international finance and its applications. Course topics include the structure, function and operation of Foreign Exchange Market; the concept and theory of balance of payments; models of interest rate parity, purchasing power parity and exchange rate determination to analyze exchange rate changes and forecast exchange rate; the evolution of International Monetary System; Output, exchange rate and macroeconomic policy, and international financial topics.

The course is designed to prepare students for leadership in a globally interdependent and culturally diverse workforce. Throughout the course, students are challenged to question, think, and respond thoughtfully to the issues they observe and encounter in the internship setting, and the designated city in general. Students have the opportunity to cultivate the leadership skills as defined by the National Association of Colleges and Employers (NACE), such as critical thinking, teamwork, and diversity. Assignments focus on building a portfolio that highlights those competencies and their application to workplace skills. The hybrid nature of the course allows students to develop their skills in a self-paced environment with face-to-face meetings and check-ins to frame their intercultural internship experience. Students complete 45 hours of in-person and asynchronous online learning activities and 225-300 hours at their internship placement.

The course is part of the Laurea Magistrale program and is intended for advanced level students. Enrolment is by permission of the instructor. Through the critical review of classical theories of capitalism, students discuss both fixed and invariant elements in the development of modern capitalism and what makes peculiar its contemporary forms. Students examine some of the most important concepts in present intellectual and political debate, such as globalization, financialization, etc. The course begins with a historical and theoretical framing of the question regarding the peculiarity of contemporary capitalism, briefly considering some of the most influential classical approaches to the study of capitalism. The course subsequently focuses on more recent debates and examines several proposals to conceptually grasp the specific capitalist formation that began to take shape in the early 1970s. Such concepts as flexible accumulation and late capitalism, the knowledge economy and neoliberalism, cognitive and postcolonial capitalism, Empire and postfordism, "racial capitalism" and feminist critique of political economy are critically discussed. The course then focuses on the so-called "platform capitalism." Taking platforms both as emerging business model and as a political form the course investigates their origins in the intertwined domains of logistics and digitization. It then focuses on the operations of some of the most important platforms - from Uber to Amazon, from Deliveroo to Airbnb - and discusses their implications both for the transformation of urban spaces and for labor (introducing such notions as "algorithmic management" and "digital labor"). In general, platforms are taken both as a specific research object and as a lens that allows discerning wider tendencies in the development of contemporary capitalism.

The six-week summer lab research program at National Taiwan University places students in various science, engineering and social science research labs and/or projects under the supervision of faculty. Students spend approximately 30 hours per week in lab activities.