Economics

This course teaches the fundamentals of econometrics, in particular regression analysis and statistical inference. It purposefully starts at a level that assumes no prior knowledge of statistics, econometrics, or programming. The course does not rely on advanced math, rather it uses practical learning to understand and interpret simple and multiple linear regressions and detect whether an analysis uncovers correlations or causality. The course teaches the use of R, a very powerful and widely used programming language, to perform data cleaning and undertake statistical analyses. Students carry out a small-scale research project using real-world data and regression analysis to reveal associations between various variables.

This course offers students a unique opportunity to understand the long-term trajectory of global economic development from the dawn of civilization to today. It explores major historical milestones such as the birth of civilization, religious reform, the Industrial Revolution, the Columbian Exchange, the Black Death, the Great Depression, and the World Wars. Unlike typical history courses focused on facts, this course integrates economic theory with historical analysis. Students will gain a deep understanding of how past events shaped today’s economic and social systems. By bridging economics and history, the course enhances your ability to analyze development processes, understand their causes and consequences, and apply these insights to modern challenges. It also prepares students to interpret current transformations and equips them with a stronger foundation for navigating the future. Through this interdisciplinary lens, the course cultivates both historical awareness and economic thinking essential for future leaders and analysts.

This course introduces students to the basic concepts and issues in contemporary political economy, with a particular focus on the political economy of the contemporary social democratic state. The course introduces students to the concepts of economic analysis and the relevance of these concepts to the study of government and politics. It provide students with an understanding of the problems of market failure and government failure and provides a scholarly framework to comparatively evaluate these problems. It provides students with a familiarity with a number of classic and key contemporary readings in political economy. 

This course examines fundamental principles of financial accounting for the purposes of external reporting. The course starts with a discussion of the framework of financial accounting: its nature, intents, and purposes, and the context and environment in which it operates. This includes, and eventually entails, the need for, and various sources of, accounting regulation and accounting standards. The course unpacks various core financial accounting concepts and conventions, but the course also looks into the processes used to record, summarize, and present financial accounting information as well as, crucially, its interpretation. This course focuses on the preparation, interpretation, and limitations of company financial statements for external reporting, and the regulatory framework in which financial reports are prepared.

This course develops tools for analyzing the effect of social networks, the way that culture constrains and enables economic outcomes, and the effect that systems of power have the reproduction of economic inequalities. These tools are the foundation on which economic sociology seeks to explain, criticize, influence, and predict economic action. The first part of the course establishes three primary intellectual camps or “theories” of economic action: power, culture, and rational action. The second part of the course applies these theoretical approaches to address a series of contemporary economic questions and concerns.

This course focuses on the real transactions across borders (i.e., those transactions that involve a physical movement of goods or a tangible commitment of economic resources), such as the pattern of trade, gains from trade, and trade volume.