Economics

This course examines episodes of crises and instability in order to understand how their key dynamics are embedded within historical, institutional and social contexts. It examines why some crises have a cyclical character while others do not, and how crisis contains elements to unlock the secrets of present-day and future sources of instability.

​​​​​​This course provides an introduction to the field of marketing and covers: marketing management process; market research; creating product offerings through product development; pricing strategies; delivering value through supply chain decisions; service strategies; and communicating to markets both through personal and impersonal media. Course participants must have a basic understanding of statistics and regression, and be able to work with a statistical software like Stata, SPSS, or Jamovi. The course assumes students have completed the courses Statistics (ECB1STAT) and Econometrics (ECB2METRIE), or equivalent, as a prerequisite.

Economics is divided into two major subfields, microeconomics and macroeconomics. This course provides an introduction to microeconomics, which attempts to understand the behavior of individual entities such as markets, firms, and households. Consistent with the idea of a “principles” class, the course focuses on a core set of fundamental concepts to understand various microeconomic issues such as scarcity; tradeoffs; opportunity cost; incentive; marginal thinking; exchange; efficiency; information, and so on.

This course elaborates on the macroeconomic topics and theories that have been discussed in prior courses. A key concern is the coordination between the goods market, the labor market, and financial markets in a closed economy framework. Coordination failures play a central role in explaining macroeconomic fluctuations and providing roles for fiscal and monetary policy. The courses develops a new Keynesian view of macroeconomics, developing theories and models for the short- and medium-run. Using recent OECD Economic Outlooks, macroeconomic theory is applied to a wide variety of recent macroeconomic problems and policy dilemmas. The course also includes some critical reflections on the standard new Keynesian model.

This course is an undergraduate level investments course. It is designed to provide a framework for understanding the modern investment theory and practice. The course covers financial markets, portfolio theory, asset pricing models, market efficiency and behavioral finance, bond and equity valuation, investment performance evaluation, financial derivatives, and other special topics.