PhD in Economics

Required:

ECON 800 — Quantitative Methods in Economic Analysis — 3

Course Requirements

At least one of:

At least two of:

Additional Compulsory Requirements:

COURSE DESCRIPTIONS

ECON 800: Quantitative Methods in Economic Analysis:

Unconstrained and equality- and inequality-constrained optimization; the Kuhn-Tucker formulation; abstract spaces; dynamic programming; dynamical systems.

ECON 801. Advanced Microeconomic Analysis:

Economic theory and methodology; theory of consumer behavior, theory of the competitive firm, supply and factor demand; duality relations in consumer and producer theory, welfare change measures; partial equilibrium analysis, perfect competition, monopoly; choice under uncertainty, the expected utility model, risk aversion; insurance, portfolio and production decisions under risk. General equilibrium analysis, efficiency, and welfare; market failures, externalities, and the theory of the second best; introduction to game theory; adverse selection, signaling, screening and moral hazard.

ECON 803: Advanced Macroeconomic Analysis:

Topics will be selected from: new Keynesian approaches to business cycle theory; endogenously generated business cycles; models of credit and financial intermediation; mechanism design and time inconsistency issues; political economy models; heterogeneous-agent models with strategic interaction; path dependence, network effects, and lock-in; economies as evolving self-organizing systems.

ECO 806 Topics in Macroeconomics:

This course deals with two of the main topics of current research frontier in macroeconomics: 1) Human capital and economic growth and; 2) Human capital and wage inequality. Each introduces labor economic concept of human capital to explain the trends in the quantity and the distribution of economic output, which many Macroeconomists actively work on. First part of course reviews literature that considers human capital as an important source of economic growth and attempts to quantify its contribution to economic growth and development. The second part focuses on the trends in wage inequality in the U.S. and relates those to human capital theory. The macroeconomic implications of the rising wage inequality are also discussed.

ECO 807: Special Topics in Computational Analysis of Economic Models:

This course introduces the student to the basic concepts of computation and then the same techniques that are frequently used to solve various types and classes of economic problems.

ECO 811 Economics of Uncertainty:

This course is concerned specifically with predictions about market outcomes when agents are incompletely informed about trading opportunities and interacting with a potential trading partner is costly. Four steps will be taken in this process. Each of them involves the study of specific papers.

ECO 817: Urban Economics:

This course explores urban economics and its connections with industrial organization, public finance, international trade and the theory of endogenous growth. The course focuses on the theory of externalities in an urban context. Transportation, housing markets, and environmental issues are also studied.

ECO 818: Financial Markets:

In this course, we study interesting problems in the analysis and design of market mechanisms with emphasis on financial markets. Possible topics include: static and dynamic asset pricing theory, game theoretical models of finance, empirical asset pricing, corporate finance, comparative study of financial markets, and the financial crisis and its policy implication. We may be also interested in auctions and matching with applications to IO, market design and computer science. The specific topics will be determined at the first class based on students' interests.

ECO 827: Growth Underdevelopment Economies:

Application of contemporary methods of economic analysis to typical and critical problems of poor countries. Depending upon staffing, topics may include: problems of agricultural change and industrial development, organization of markets and risk-sharing, problems of planning, and issues in class and international economic relations.

ECO 828: Advanced Econometric Methods:

This course is an in-depth study of some select topics in which students will be familiarized with the latest developments after reviewing earlier literature. It is necessarily theoretical, though it keeps applications of the models in proper perspective. Several econometric tolls will be presented which will be potentially useful in preparing doctoral dissertations. The content of this course is part of the material included in the field exam in econometrics.

ECO 830: Advanced Topics in Financial Economics:

Selected topics in financial economics of current significance to the profession.

ECO 832: International Trade:

Theories of international trade; welfare and distributional aspects of trade and commercial policies. Optimal trade policies in the presence of domestic distortions; strategic trade policy; international trade and economic growth.

ECON 675. Advanced Topics in Econometrics:

Advanced treatment of issues important in econometrics. Topics chosen from asymptotic theory, nonlinear estimation, Bayesian and robust econometrics, econometric time series, limited dependent variables and censored regression models, nonparametric and semi-parametric methods, bootstrapping and Monte Carlo techniques, etc.

ECO 824: Macroeconomic Theory:

This course aims to provide you with a basic knowledge of the leading contemporaneous theories of growth and economic fluctuations. Second, it intends to help you develop the analytical and methodological tools to follow and understand modern professional research in macroeconomics.

ECO 825: Time Series Analysis:

Topics to be covered include: basic concepts in time series analysis, stationary ARMA process, time series regression, cointegration, conditional heteroskedasticity, and the Kalman filter.

ECO 812: Industrial Organization:

The goal of this course is to study industrial organization [IO] from a theoretical and empirical perspective. Industrial organization is the study of how firms compete and interact in different types of markets and under different types of conditions.

ECO 813: Economics of the Family:

The main topics will include: fertility and quality of children, human capital investment and economic development, marriage & divorce, intergenerational family link, family decision-making, health & longevity.

ECO 814: Monetary Economics:

The objective of this course is to provide students with a review or survey of some of the most important issues in monetary economics including how and why changes in money affect macroeconomic variables such as output, income and its distribution, employment, prices, and interest rates.

ECO 816: Monetary Policy:

This course focuses on monetary theory and policy. Topics to be discussed include: basics, stylized facts, data sources, and questions; money and inflation; money and asset prices; Fisherian Theory; money and interest rates; segmented markets; money and production; inflation targeting and the Taylor rule; monetary policy and term structures/credit structures; bank regulations; some foundations

ECO 826: Capital Theory:

This course will give students a serious understanding of Marxist political economy. Topics to be discusses include: value and surplus value; reproduction and development of productive forces; transfer of surplus and the transformation problem; fractions of capital and capitalist competition; accumulation and crises; the 'Cambridge' controversy.

ECO 899: Thesis