Economics

This course uses economic theories such as trade specialization and investment strategy to create a foundation for international economic analysis. Primarily, the course focuses on the impacts of globalization, its roots, the current state of global trade and the concept of “de-globalization.” As well as this, it discusses the link between free-trade and growth, and why we do not see this connection in certain developing countries.

This course covers two parts for international economics, international trade and international finance. In the first part, we will examine the causes and effects of international trade. We will analyze the content of trade, the distribution of gains to trade, and measure of the Global Value Chain. The effects of trade on economic growth, wage, employment, economic inequality, and environment will be studied. Lastly, we will explore why countries may want to limit and regulate international trade, and discuss the causes of trade conflicts and possible solutions. The second part of the course covers topics in open-economy macroeconomics and in international finance. We will first introduce national income accounting and the balance of payments, and discuss the relation between international trade and financial transactions. We will then study exchange rate, an important international price, exchange rate determination, and exchange rate regime. Finally, we will discuss the theory and policy of open-economy macroeconomics, and the internationalization of the Chinese yuan.

This course examines a selection of the major themes in economic history. Students read academic articles written by economists that use novel historical data, state-of-the-art micro econometric methods, and economic theory. The reading list covers a broad range of historical periods and geographic regions that provide unique settings to answer questions that are usually difficult to address in contemporary settings. The course begins with a discussion of the evolution of economic history and the main empirical methods used in applied microeconomics and their application in economic history. Then, students examine interrelated themes including the ultimate determinants of economic prosperity; culture and religion as drivers of social and economic change; the origins of gender inequality; the impact of ethnic animus and conflict in the long run; and the persistent effects of immigration and technology adoption on the economy.

"Economic Geography" is a major component of geography, which is the most developed sub-discipline in most National Geographic Science Systems. The development and characteristics of economic geography, on one hand, are closely related to the development of economic activities. On the other hand, they are greatly influenced by geography, economics and other related disciplines. As an independent discipline, economic geography has only a history of over a hundred years. However, its origin and development can be traced further.

The course provides students with a thorough understanding of core concepts and methods of microeconomics, as a foundation for subsequent study of microeconomics, and as one of the key elements in the professional training of an economist.

Growth and Development builds on concepts and theories presented in some first and second year courses, such as Multidisciplinary Economics and Intermediate Macroeconomics. The course takes a multidisciplinary approach to explore the relationship between growth, poverty, and development. The course starts by reviewing theories of modern economic growth including the Solow and Lewis models. We complement and build on the Intermediate Macroeconomics course, which covers short-run business cycles, by examining long run processes of economic growth and explaining persistent differences in income levels around the world. The primary focus is on developing countries.  Second, the course reviews the measurement of poverty and inequality and their relationship with economic growth. Third, the course discusses the role of trade and institutions in shaping development trajectories. Fourth, problems of human development facing developing countries today, including issues related to demographic transitions, health, and education are analyzed. Fifth, green growth and the necessity of environmental sustainability are analyzed. And lastly, the course concludes with a discussion of the aid effectiveness debate.

The Economics of Information is a critical field that explores how information affects economic decisions, market outcomes, and organizational structures. In this course, students investigate concepts such as information asymmetry, signaling, screening, moral hazard, and adverse selection in order to understand how information and communication may lead to unfavorable outcomes in interactions between agents. Students explore the impact of these phenomena on markets, contracts, auctions, and policy-making, and show how to design institutions that could help to alleviate issues related to asymmetric information.

This is an upper division and graduate level course on experimental economics, focusing on behavioral game theory. The course covers an introduction to Experimental Economics, analyzing classic experiments in each field of behavioral game theory and describing how their results affirm or differ from economic theory and field data. The course provides opportunities to evaluate current research and practice experimental design by writing a research proposal. 

Course Prerequisite: Intermediate microeconomics or game theory. Graduate microeconomic theory and/or undergraduate analysis is valuable.
 

This course provides a study of the fundamentals of statistical inference such as probability distribution, point estimation, interval estimation, and hypothesis testing. Other topics include: sampling distributions; parameter estimation; confidence intervals; parametric hypothesis testing; ANOVA and nonparametric contrasts; Bayesian inference.