Economics

The emergence of new powers is changing today's global order. Yet the economic and political developments underlying this new era have deep historical roots. This course teaches students to the major historical events and trends that have shaped the global economy, starting with the industrial revolution in the 18th century and the first period of true globalization in the 19th century, as imperialism and capitalism spread across the world. The 20th century is a story of both unprecedented growth and economic divergence. It is also one of repeated crises, from the First World War, the Great Depression, and the Second World War, through to the oil and debt crises of the 1970s and 1980s.

This course provides a comprehensive overview of what blockchain is and how it works. It explores the transition from the accounting traditional ledger to a distributed one and describes how transactions occur under this new paradigm. Insights on how blockchain affect the future of industry and organizations also are covered. The course also covers aspects related to automation of assurance procedures and provides some concepts to develop a blockchain system. Finally, an introduction to the concept of the digitalization of assets and related contract automation which leads to Smart Contracts are discussed. The mission of this course is to introduce concepts and tools to understand the potential of blockchain technology in real world applications.

This course offers an introduction to individual decision-making. It explores game theory techniques that can be useful to understand strategic situations that appear in all areas of everyday life. Topics include: preferences; simultaneous games; nash equilibrium; backward induction; subgame perfect nash equilibrium; behavioral economics; neuroeconomics.

This course helps students understand how business regulation operates in domestic and global contexts. Students examine the foundational reasons for why government intervenes in market economies, as well as how regulatory agencies are designed, created, and maintained.  Students look closely at the nature of regulatory standards and how they are shaped, and they examine how business organizations understand and comply with regulations.  Additionally, students examine environmental regulatory tools, such as carbon taxes and cap and trade programs to understand how they are designed and how effective they are in reducing the incidence of pollution.  Finally, on the domestic front, students learn about regulating innovation and technological challenges, such as artificial intelligence, cryptocurrency and social media on tech platforms.  

This course examines the economic principles underlying various areas of the law and which are relevant to legal practice. It covers competition law and consumer protection; property rights, including intellectual property; and issues of damages and compensation. The course will develop economic tools to analyze these legal issues including incomplete contracting, oligopoly analysis and incomplete information.

This course develops the basic concepts and tools applicable to corporate financial decisions. It studies the three main tasks of financial managers: project evaluation, financing decisions, and working capital management. Specific topics include present value calculation, valuation of stocks and bonds, investment criteria and capital budgeting, risk and return, cost of capital, capital structure, dividend policy, short term financial planning, and credit and inventory management. Prerequisite: an introductory accounting course. Text: Ross et al., CORPORATE FINANCE FUNDAMENTALS. Assessment: four assignments (16%), 16-page group project (14%), midterm exam (30%), final exam (40%).

This course provides an introduction to financial economics. The course starts with a brief discussion of the functions of financial systems and a description of existing financial assets, financial intermediaries, and markets. The first part of the course deals with the time value of money and its applications, notably the pricing of risk-free bonds and the capital budgeting decisions by firms. The second part then introduces the notions of risky assets, risky returns, and risk aversion, and highlights the benefits of diversification. It presents the foundations of portfolio theory, explains the standard models of equity risk premia, and highlights some of their important applications. The last part discusses the efficient market hypothesis and the contending theories of behavioral finance.