Economics

Principles of Microeconomics is an introductory course in microeconomics. Microeconomics is about the decision-making of consumers and firms and examines how different market mechanisms operate to allocate resources. This course studies principles of economics in microeconomics area, such as how each economic agent (consumers, firms and government) acts, how market, where firms and consumers interact, is organized and works, and how firms compete in different structures of the market.

This course examines the main factors that determine the overall levels of production and employment in the economy, including the influence of government policy and international trade, and addresses the level of employment and economic activity in the economy as a whole. It covers money, interest rates, financial markets, inflation, unemployment, and economic policy. Students taking this course should have a prior knowledge of mathematics.

This course introduces the theoretical and empirical research in behavioral economics and discusses how the use of methods and evidence in behavioral economics has changed both economics as a discipline and policymaking processes in the past few decades.

This course covers individual, team, and organizational perspectives on learning and, subsequently, how learning, training, and development can be managed. The emerging field of professional learning of individuals and teams in an organizational setting is introduced. The course is based on insights from cognitive and learning sciences as well as organizational studies and human resource development. It analyses learning needs within organizations and identifies key variables that play a role when employees learn in a training setting or informally. Critical factors are identified that stimulate or hinder learning in organizations. Theoretical insights are applied to the analysis of organizational cases about professional learning. Additionally, students take on the role of consultants where they interview and advise an existing organization on improving its learning and development policies. The final report contains a scientific reflection on this professional learning practice, which will also be communicated to the organization.

This course examines the modern analysis of economic growth, productivity increment and innovations. Topics include three categories: (1) theoretical part: neoclassical growth model, models of endogenous technological change, misallocation, basic network analysis; (2) dataset part: Chinese annual firm-level surveys, Chinese administrative registration records, patent registration data (EP, US, CN), patent citation data, patent transaction data; (3) software part: stata, matlab, gephi, latex.