Economics

The purpose of this course is to study how investors (both retail and institutional) construct and manage portfolios. The course follows the investment process investors follow in real life. That is from Asset Liability Management to Strategic and Tactical Asset Allocation to Portfolio Management, Security Selection, and finally Trading. Each week the course studies a different asset class. Next to traditional assets like listed stocks we look at the added value of real estate, mutual funds, hedge funds, and private equity in order to build diversified portfolios. Finally the course introduces a new development in professional asset management; Socially Responsible Investing (SRI). The course studies the impact of SRI on portfolio return and risk. All topics are explored via real life cases using actual data.

The course covers probability and statistics, focusing on how the mathematical ideas of statistics carry over into the world of applications in economics and finance. It examines statistical concepts from economic perspective. For example, why are statistical concepts (e.g., mean and variance) useful in economics? What are economic intuition and interpretation for the probability and statistical relations?

This course develops students’ conceptual understanding of equity portfolio management issues and their knowledge of the problems and proposed solutions. It considers several areas like portfolio optimization, expected return determination, index models and CAPM, multi-factor models, together with a focus on new markets/ tools associated with private investment. It also focuses on sustainability concerns. The course is applied and excel will be regularly used throughout the course to provide empirical examples. Prerequisites: basic statistics; matrix multiplication; basic Excel; basic finance. 

This course examines the historical and philosophical foundations of economics. It discusses how the history of economic thought has evolved throughout the years by placing the various approaches and methods in economics in their historical context. At the end of this course, students are aware of the rich variety of approaches to analyze economic problems of interest and understand the historic roots of many concepts used in modern economic analyzes.

This course is for students who have studied the principles of economics and will take them through to the next level in their study of microeconomics. The course approach stresses the relevance and application of microeconomic theory in both managerial and public policy decision making. A combination of tables, figures, and simple mathematics are used to provide the grounding in the key principles of microeconomics for further study in the economics programme.

The course provides an introduction to macro-international trade theory and micro-international trade practice. It explores the history and development of China's foreign trade operations, including its challenges, achievements, and potential business opportunities. The course examines both the theory and practice of foreign trade in order to show the direction the country is moving in terms of its trade operations.

This course analyzes the impact of money, the banking system, and financial markets on modern economic activity and their interaction, helping students understand the financial sector's linkage to overall economic volatility. Students conduct rigorous analysis with simplified models, so that they can understand the mechanism of the operation of economic models such as asset pricing, bank runs, and secured lending restrictions, and explain them in clear logical steps. This course analyzes the changing face of financial intermediation in recent years, the rise of the shadow banking system, and its relationship to the global financial tsunami. It also addresses important topics such as non-traditional monetary policy, quantitative easing, Basel III, leverage cycles, systemic risk, central banks and financial stability, and overall prudential supervision policies. In addition, this course also analyzes issues such as digital currency (virtual currency), fintech and blockchain, shadow banking (supervision arbitrage and systemic risk) and supervision, the exit of quantitative easing, the issue of nominal interest rate "zero lower bound" and the latest topics such as negative interest rate policy, as well as the latest developments in the regulation and prudential supervision of the global financial system and financial institutions.