Economics

The course introduces the objectives and implementations of Competition Policy such as antitrust institutions, its member states, and the US. Participants learn how to evaluate the goals and their legal implementation from an economic point of view. Such an (empirical and theoretical) economic analysis enables participants to criticize existing Competition Law and to suggest improvements. These findings are applied to landmark antitrust cases and ongoing controversies among competition policy scholars. The course starts with an overview of international antitrust institutions, thereby covering the major systems of competition policy in the EU and the US, as well as suggested or recently implemented frameworks in developing countries and transition economies. The course then continues with a theoretical and empirical identification of market power – a necessary condition for any anticompetitive practice. The following sessions provide an economic analysis of the major fields of competition policy such as the fight against collusion, merger regulation, and the abuse of a dominant position. For each field, students apply modern theories of strategic firm behavior to explain when and why firms indeed act in an anticompetitive way. These insights are then utilized to develop guidelines for antitrust authorities. Finally, these recommendations are taken as a benchmark for an evaluation of existing antitrust policy schemes. The course makes excessive use of case studies to illustrate and test the policy recommendations. Prerequisite for this course is knowledge and understanding of microeconomics. Exchange students need to major in economics.

The long-run development and international economic relations of developing countries are chosen as the major topic of this course. The long-run growth section deals with structural change from agriculture to industry and services, institutions, distribution, population, education, health, taxation and government expenditure, agriculture, and other resources. The international relations section relates growth to migration, aid, international trade, and foreign debt, the latter including financial crises.

Students research a self-chosen topic and develop an extended research essay under the direct tutelage of an appointed mentor. Students engage in conversation with teachers who are experts in the subject being studied. These tutorials allow students to develop their own ideas under the direct supervision of a tutor.

This course studies the transmission mechanisms, effectiveness and limitations of monetary policies in coherent macroeconomics models. Course topics include: monetary policy in a basic macroeconomic model; aggregate supply and aggregate demand analysis; classical and Keynesian approach; transmission mechanism of monetary policies; implications of expectation on monetary policies; rational expectation; monetary policy: discretion vs rules; role of capital market imperfections; frictions in the capital market; implications of capital market imperfections on the transmission mechanism; asset prices, financial crisis and monetary policy; Japan and quantitative easing; sub-prime crisis and quantitative easing in the US; credit booms and asset bubbles. Text: Frederic Mishkin, THE ECONOMICS OF MONEY, BANKING AND FINANCIAL MARKETS. The textbook provides the basic materials of the course. The rigor of the course goes beyond that of the textbook. Additional references from journal articles are used.

This course provides an introduction to cost accounting with emphasis on approaches and techniques for product costing, cost control, and providing financial information for managerial decision-making. Topics include the manager and management accounting, an introduction to cost terms and purposes, cost-volume-profit analysis, job costing, activity-based costing and activity-based management, master budget and responsibility accounting, flexible budgets, direct-cost variances, and management control, inventory costing and capacity analysis, allocation of support-department costs, common costs, and revenues, cost allocation: joint products and byproducts and process costing.

This course introduces the main concepts of modern labor economics. It covers the relation between labor market and other markets. The course combines microeconomic and macroeconomic analytical tools to analyze how society develops, allocates, and rewards human resources. It then studies a wide range of labor-related issues with special emphasis on empirical evidence in the literature and the evidence reported by government agencies and policy makers. The basic data analytic tools are introduced and discussed at length. Topics of focus include the theory of human capital, labor supply, labor demand, the life-cycle model, immigration and migration, and the role of unions.