Economics

The Chinese Economy Overview is mainly designed for international students, and the curriculum is relatively basic, so that foreign students can familiarize themselves with the Chinese environment and understand Chinese history, especially the history of economic development. This course mainly guides students to comprehensively view the evolution of China's economy and understand the current situation of China's economy.

This course introduces students to the main techniques that economists use for estimating economic relationships, testing economic theories and evaluating government and business policies. The course covers the fundamentals of linear regression analysis as well as more advanced topics related to estimation and inference for probability models, panel, and time series data. Students study examples based on real data and published research. In class, students use Stata, a fast and versatile software for quantitative research.

Occupying a favorable position in a network can be seen as a strategic asset. This course is interested in understanding how rational individuals behave when they position themselves in networks or interact through a given network. These issues are analyzed in the microeconomic/game theoretical framework of utility maximizing agents. Tools for modeling, describing, and analyzing networks are introduced and criteria for identifying the most central, well-connected, or influential agents in the network are reviewed. The problem of strategic network formation is explored in different contexts and the stability and efficiency of the networks that are formed are analyzed. Finally, the course is interested in how network architecture can influence different social processes such as the spread of an innovation or a trend in a population or the adoption of socially desirable or undesirable behaviors.

This is an intermediate Microeconomics course with students largely drawn from those wishing to prepare for Honors in Economics. The course builds on the foundation of microeconomics in ECON1001 (Economics 1A) and discusses in more depth the topics of consumer behavior, firm behavior, game theory and decisions under uncertainty. The course includes a series of lectures and tutorials dedicated to mathematics, which builds on the introductory mathematical economics taught in ECON1002 (Economics 1B).

This course is tailor-made for International Asian Studies Programme (IASP) students who want to engage in a short-term project. Students taking this course are required to write a research paper on a topic in international studies under the supervision of an academic staff member.

Game theory is a mathematical tool to study strategic interactions that has become a standard analytical tool in several academic disciplines, e.g. in economics, biology, and political science. This course introduces the basic concepts of non-cooperative game theory. The course analyzes and solves simple game theoretic problems; and explores numerous applications along with empirical and experimental evidence. Mathematical skills beyond simple algebra and graphical analysis are not required in this course. Assessment: midterm exam and final exam.