Economics

This course provides a fundamental understanding of financial accounting. The first part of the course presents accounting as a form of communication and a powerful tool for decision making for the management of companies as well as external users. It introduces each of the financial statements, its purpose and relationship among them. Further, it covers the conceptual framework of accounting and important differences between the International Financial Reporting Standards and US Generally Accepted Accounting Principles. The second part of the course covers the processing of accounting transactions using the double entry accounting system. It covers accounting for income, expenses, assets, liabilities and equity. This part of the course provides students the knowledge and tools to prepare a simple set of financial accounts. Students are exposed to how a transaction affects the accounting equation, the income statement, balance sheet and financial statements as a whole. The third part of the course provides students with a framework to perform financial analysis of companies. This is carried out through computing and using various ratios to assess the liquidity, solvency and profitability of a company to determine the company’s performance. The course also covers ethical issues and dilemmas relating to accounting and the moral and social implications of accounting decisions.

Over the past 20 years, digitization and the Internet have transformed business and society. The firms of the digital economy not only affect the daily life of most people in industrialized countries, but they are also highly profitable. In this course, we use the tools of game theory and industrial organization to understand the impact that digitization and the Internet on markets. The topics discussed in this class include internet infrastructure, standards, platforms, price discrimination, bundling, auctions, reputation, advertising, user-generated content, social networks, piracy and privacy.

This course on international finance focuses on decision making in an international context and the way in which financing and investment decisions change when a firm operates in more than one country. It explores international financial markets and currency parity conditions, including the relationship between spot and forward exchange rates, interest rates, and inflation rates. The course also covers the role of derivatives in hedging risk in the international capital markets, as well as the assessment and valuation of foreign investments.

This course provides the historical and geographical background to the recent trends in global exchange, material, financial and intellectual, assesses the significance of these developments and draws comparisons between past and present experience. The course examines many different chapters of global history and travel on different continents: medieval Europe, pre-Columbus America, the great civilizations of Asia and covers the debates and controversies surrounding the emergence of "global capitalism."

This course is a continuation of the foundation on microeconomics course. It is designed to provide standard tools and techniques to analyze microeconomic issues. The course begins with a review of several foundation topics on consumer and producer theory. It then moves on to discuss the general equilibrium model, whereby consumers and producers are put together in a general equilibrium framework. After that, it covers choice over time, i.e. inter-temporal choice and choices over different states of the world, i.e. choices under uncertainty. It then continues with game theory. This topic is discussed extensively. Coverage includes various solution concepts for one-shot games and sequential move games. Applications of the theory on the issues of oligopolistic competition, entry and entry prevention, and network economics receive a great deal of attention. Finally, the course ends with the asymmetric information, i.e. moral hazard and adverse selection and its application on the internal organization of the firm. Throughout the course, empirical observations and real-life cases pertaining to the issues discussed are presented. 

This course improves students’ understanding of the complexities presented by managing businesses in an international environment. It begins with a historical background of globalization and the development of institutions to support international transactions. Potential similarities and differences between countries in economic development, political and legal systems, culture, government policies on trade, and in accepting foreign investments are discussed. Differences in national monetary systems and capital markets are considered with reference to globalization and the integration of world markets. The second part of this course reviews the role of location, the strategy and organization of multinational corporations (MNCs), cross-border alliances and international mergers and acquisitions, and the formation of international knowledge networks for technology creation. The course concludes with ethical issues faced by international businesses. The course uses Hill’s 14th edition of ISE International Business: Competing in the Global Marketplace. Students also need to register on the Harvard website (www.hbr.org) and purchase assigned cases using a link included in the course manual.