Economics

The focus of the course is on the role of information in a wide spectrum of examples and contexts, ranging from individual decision-making to collective choice, to strategic interactions between asymmetrically informed parties, to markets under asymmetric information. The course launches with individual decision-making. It examines how new information is used to update decision-makers’ beliefs and revise their actions, culminating with the notion of the value of information. Next, the course turns to collective decision-making. It scrutinizes procedures for aggregating individual preferences and raises issues of efficiency, justice, strategic voting, and manipulations of private information. Finally, the course makes an excursion into the field of information economics. It looks at contract design to provide specific incentives: for instance, to the experts with superior knowledge to report their information faithfully, or to the employees to exert a certain level of effort. Finally, the course discusses the impact of asymmetric information on the insurance markets.

This course offers a study of applied econometrics. Topics include: linear regression; univariate time series analysis; extensions of linear regression; advanced univariate time series analysis; advanced analysis of cross section data; panel data analysis.

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.