Economics

will be reviewed later. 

This course reviews the economic history of the United States from the colonial era to the present. It studies the features and development of the American economy and examines the major events that have transformed it over its history. The course provides an in-depth analysis on how markets, institutions and government policies have evolved in the U.S. and how they have contributed to economic growth. Economic evolution of the U.S. since the colonial period onward has been quite unique and impressive. What is more, most of the global economic problems we face today, such as sovereign debt problems, financial crisis, recessions, income inequality, poverty, technological change, globalization of labor and others, the U.S. has played a critical role.

The International Internship course develops vital business skills employers are actively seeking in job candidates. This course is comprised of two parts: an internship, and a hybrid academic seminar. Students are placed in an internship within a sector related to their professional ambitions. The hybrid academic seminar, conducted both online and in-person, analyzes and evaluates the workplace culture and the daily working environment students experience. The course is divided into eight career readiness competency modules as set out by the National Association of Colleges and Employers (NACE), which guide the course’s learning objectives. During the academic seminar, students reflect weekly on their internship experience within the context of their host culture by comparing and contrasting their experiences with their global internship placement with that of their home culture. Students reflect on their experiences in their internship, the role they have played in the evolution of their experience in their internship placement, and the experiences of their peers in their internship placements. Students develop a greater awareness of their strengths relative to the career readiness competencies, the subtleties and complexities of integrating into a cross-cultural work environment, and how to build and maintain a career search portfolio.

The objective of this course is to provide an introduction to modeling univariate and multivariate time series in economics. The topics covered include modeling non-stationary time series, Granger causality, co-integration, ARIMA, seasonality, ARCH, and Unit roots.

This course examines imperfectly competitive markets as well as the behavior of firms in these markets. The course looks at the effects of various business decisions and of various forms of policy intervention on the way firms compete and on the outcome of oligopolistic markets. Prominent recent antitrust cases are also discussed. Topics discussed include game theory, the determinants of market power in static oligopolistic models, strategic positioning and advertising, consumer inertia, collusive agreements, horizontal mergers, strategic and non-strategic barriers to entry, exclusionary practices, and anti-trust intervention. Prerequisites: familiarity with basic microeconomics concepts, in particular with the notion of Nash Equilibrium and Subgame Perfect Nash Equilibrium, with basic oligopolistic models (such as Bertrand and Cournot models of static competition) and with the fundamentals of unconstrained and constrained optimization problems.

This course introduces the general method and use of cost-benefit analysis with a particular emphasis on applications to resource and environmental economics. The course therefore deals with many crucial aspects of environmental cost-benefit analysis to provide the necessary background to assess the validity of practical environmental cost-benefit analyses, as well as to formulate how current guidelines can be improved based on the latest economic research. The course consists of a lecture block that provides an overview and introduces students to key concepts. Assessment is based on a presentation and written assignment on a topic of the student’s choosing. 

This course examines public-policy making, its characteristics, determinants, and consequences in liberal democracies. The course first provides theoretical foundations from both economics and political science and then examines a number of topics from both theoretical and applied areas of political economy: collective action, electoral competition, fiscal policy and redistribution, bureaucracy, rent-seeking, regulation, information and accountability, and constitutional reforms.

This course examines the main economic aspects of the current development of the European Union (EU) and its policies. The course covers the process of European Integration and its economic impacts on individuals, firms, and regions. Special attention is devoted to the analysis of the economic opportunities and challenges generated by economic integration, and to the assessment of the policies designed to support this process and mitigate its potential side-effects. The course touches on the institutional, political, and historical background of European integration, though its main focus is on the economic analysis of the policies and prospects for the European Union.