Economics

This course introduces the current state of political economy. It discusses the theoretical models of voting, electoral competition, interest group politics, non-democratic politics, and political transition. The course provides an understanding of the main theoretical models and the recent empirical research testing these models.

This course examines the main concepts and theories of organizational economics within an integrated framework. Topics include: individual behavior in business and markets; the structure and management of individual and divisional incentives; the interaction between organizations and their environment, not only economic but also political and institutional.

To improve the performance of a firm, managers have to find tools to hire the right people, sort them into the right job, motivate them to do their work well, develop their skills through formal and informal learning, and cooperate efficiently with co-workers. Firms that stimulate one aspect might do so at the cost of others. Managers, therefore, face many complex trade-offs in their personnel policies. In this course, economic tools to understand these trade-offs are discussed and illustrated with examples of how to apply them in practice. Questions posed in the course include: Why should pay vary across workers within firms – and how "compressed" should pay be within firms? Should firms pay workers for their performance on the job or for their skills or hours of work? How are pay and promotions structured across jobs to induce optimal effort from employees? How are jobs designed and performance measures? Why use teams and how are teams used most effectively? How should all these human resource management practices, from incentive pay to teamwork, be combined within firms?

This course investigates the responsibilities and limitations of government in a market economy. It covers traditional public-finance topics of public goods, externalities, unwanted markets, and asymmetric information alongside social insurance, moral hazard, and social mobility. Topics Covered Include: Public goods, Social costs and benefits, Restraint on personal choice, Information and efficiency, Social insurance and moral hazard, Social justice in taxation and without government, The attributes and consequences of entitlements, Old age and health care entitlements, The choice of taxation, Optimal taxation and alternative tax bases, and the growth of government and competing views on the need for government

This is an introductory course in econometrics, which provides a study of basic math theories and tools for empirical economics studies and research. It also provides a series of Stata lectures throughout the semester. Topics include experimental ideal, bootstrapping, Monte Carlo simulation, survey design, binary dependent variable, instrumental variable, truncated regression, Tobit model, and Heckman selection.