Online courses directory (841)

We will apply insights from game theory to explain human social behavior, focusing on novel applications which have heretofore been the realm of psychologists and philosophers—for example, why people speak indirectly, in what sense beauty is socially constructed, and where our moral intuitions come from—and eschewing traditional economic applications such as industrial organization or auctions.

We will employ standard games such as the prisoners dilemma, coordination, hawk-dove, and costly signaling, and use standard game theory tools such as Nash Equilibria, Subgame Perfection, and Perfect Bayesian Equilibria. These tools will be taught from scratch and no existing knowledge of game theory, economics, or mathematics is required. At the same time, students familiar with these games and tools will not find the course redundant because of the focus on non-orthodox applications.

This course addresses the practical challenges of making an established company entrepreneurial and examines various roles related to corporate entrepreneurship. Outside speakers complement faculty lectures.

A large proportion of contemporary research on organizations, strategy and management relies on quantitative research methods. This course is designed to provide an introduction to some of the most commonly used quantitative techniques, including logit/probit models, count models, event history models, and pooled cross-section techniques.

This is a course for those who are interested in the challenge posed by massive and persistent world poverty, and are hopeful that economists might have something useful to say about this challenge. The questions we will take up include: Is extreme poverty a thing of the past? What is economic life like when living under a dollar per day? Why do some countries grow fast and others fall further behind? Does growth help the poor? Are famines unavoidable? How can we end child labor—or should we? How do we make schools work for poor citizens? How do we deal with the disease burden? Is micro finance invaluable or overrated? Without property rights, is life destined to be "nasty, brutish and short"? Has globalization been good to the poor? Should we leave economic development to the market? Should we leave economic development to non-governmental organizations (NGOs)? Does foreign aid help or hinder? Where is the best place to intervene?

The course provides a survey of the theory and application of time series methods in econometrics. Topics covered will include univariate stationary and non-stationary models, vector autoregressions, frequency domain methods, models for estimation and inference in persistent time series, and structural breaks.

We will cover different methods of estimation and inferences of modern dynamic stochastic general equilibrium models (DSGE): simulated method of moments, Maximum likelihood and Bayesian approach. The empirical applications in the course will be drawn primarily from macroeconomics.

This course is an advanced topics course on market and mechanism design. We will study existing or new market institutions, understand their properties, and think about whether they can be re-engineered or improved. Topics discussed include mechanism design, auction theory, one-sided matching in house allocation, two-sided matching, stochastic matching mechanisms, student assignment, and school choice.

This class discusses the economic aspects of current issues in education, using both economic theory and econometric and institutional readings. Topics include discussion of basic human capital theory, the growing impact of education on earnings and earnings inequality, statistical issues in determining the true rate of return to education, the labor market for teachers, implications of the impact of computers on the demand for worker skills, the effectiveness of mid-career training for adult workers, the roles of school choice, charter schools, state standards and educational technology in improving K-12 education, and the issue of college financial aid.

This course is designed for students particularly concerned with the practical problems of operating in large formal organizations, either from an operational or a research perspective. It will focus, as the title suggests, upon different forms of economic organizations and institutions in advanced and developing industrial societies and the theories (and theoretical perspectives) which might help us to understand them.

The objective of this course is to learn the financial tools needed to make good business decisions. The course presents the basic insights of corporate finance theory, but emphasizes the application of theory to real business decisions. Each session involves class discussion, some centered on lectures and others around business cases.

The course is a comprehensive introduction to the theory, algorithms and applications of integer optimization and is organized in four parts: formulations and relaxations, algebra and geometry of integer optimization, algorithms for integer optimization, and extensions of integer optimization.

This course studies basic concepts of financial and managerial reporting. The viewpoint is that of readers of financial and managerial reports rather than the accountants who prepare them.

This class analyzes the theoretical and historical reasons why governments in latecomer countries have intervened with a wide array of policies to foster industrial development at various turning points: the initiation of industrial activity; the diversification of the industrial base; the restructuring of major industrial institutions; and the entry into high-technology sectors.