Graduate Courses

Current Course Listings and Schedules (Office of the Registrar)

Schedule Spring 2008

Schedule Fall 2008

180.000 Math Camp for First-Year Graduate Students

Chan: August 18-29

180.601-602 Microeconomic Theory

First term: a systematic presentation of microeconomic theory in both its partial equilibrium and general equilibrium aspects. Topics covered will include preferences and utility, exchange, production, theory of the firm, capital and interest, competition and monopoly, stability of equilibrium, and welfare economics. Second term: a more intensive discussion of selected topics, emphasizing recent contributions. Prerequisites:180.301-302 or equivalent and Differential Calculus 110.106 or permission of instructor.
Hill, Khan: 3 hours

180.603-604 Macroeconomic Theory

First term: a comprehensive treatment of macroeconomic theory, including static analysis of aggregate output employment, the rate of interest, and the price level; aggregative theory of investment, consumption, demand and supply of money; empirical work on aggregative relationships. Second term: the macrodynamic theory of growth, cycles, unemployment and inflation, and selected subjects. Prerequisites:180.301-302 or permission of instructor.
Maccini, Carroll: 3 hours

180.605-606 Advanced Macroeconomics

Topics of recent research in macroeconomics. Prof. Ball's course covers nominal rigidities, dynamic-consistency theories of inflation, inflation inertia and the costs of disinflation, monetary policy, costs and benefits of price stability, benefits of output stabilization, alternative policy rules, measuring inflation, unemployment, efficiency-wage theories, the behavior of the NAIRU, macro in middle-income countries, high inflation and stabilization, currency crises. Prof. Carroll's course analyzes implications of the buffer-stock and habit formation theories of consumption for comovement of aggregate variables and asset pricing. The models are applied to study the phenomena of declining U.S. saving rate, the dynamic relationship between saving rates and growth, and the equity premium puzzle. Prerequisites 180.603-604
Ball, Orphanides, Carroll: 3 hours

180.607-608 Applied Macroeconometrics

The course is an attempt to provide a framework for discussing the techniques that are used in macroeconometric analysis. Generally the bias that it has is one of looking at these from the perspective of someone analysing macroeconomic data for policy analysis. Consequently, many of the applications considered are drawn from the type of research conducted in central banks and finance ministries. Its emphasis is therefore upon the issues raised by the analysis of time series of macro-economic data. Today there is an emerging literature that looks at micro-economic data as well as conducting cross-country studies. We will tend to ignore that material as the methods used in such research are essentially those of micro-econometrics, although sometimes with adjustments made to reflect the nature of macro-economic time series.
Faust: 2 hours

180.611-612 Economics of Uncertainty / Economics of Information

A review of the theory of decision making under uncertainty and its applications to problems of optimal insurance, portfolio selection, savings decisions and optimal search. Alternative approaches to decision making under uncertainty will be surveyed. Attitudes towards risk will characterized and the issues of measurement and comparability of these attitudes discussed, both in the univariate and multivariate cases; applications will be given. The theory of optimal search will be developed with emphasis on its usefulness for the study of labor markets and unemployment. Prerequisites: 180.601 and 180.603 or permission of instructor.
Karni: 2 hours

180.614 Mathematical Economics

The course begins with the Ramsey problem in its undiscounted and discounted variants developed in the context of a general theory that can handle a variety of problems that go beyond one-sector and two-sector growth models to consider problems of resource economics (forestry and fisheries), and those in economics having to do with irreversible and non-shiftable capital. The course deals only with discrete time, however. The problems are challenging enough that one does not need to complicate them with a more difficult mathematical set-up.
Khan: 2 hours

180.615 Mathematical Methods in Economics I

A course in mathematics for economists not planning to work in quantitative areas, or for those whose mathematics background is weak. The emphasis is on optimization theory; also included are topics in advanced calculus and linear algebra. Prerequisites: 180.301-302
Karni: 2 hours

180.616 Mathematical Methods in Economics II

This is a continuation of 180.615 and is a course in dynamic aspects of optimization models. Techniques of dynamic programming and the calculus of variations will also be developed. Prerequisite: 180.615 or permission of instructor.
Khan, Carroll: 2 hours

180.618 Game Theory and Economic Behavior

This course is an introduction to cooperative and non-cooperative games. Its focus will be noncooperative game theory with applications in economics. Topics include foundations of solution concepts, refinements of Nash equilibrium, repeated games, games with incomplete information, differential games, and experimental testing of hypotheses. Prerequisite:180.601.
Chan: 2 hours

180.624 Topics in Economic Theory

The course surveys the recent literature on strategic information transmission through communication and voting. The first part of the course focuses on a setting where an uninformed principal tries to elicit information from one or multiple informed experts. The second part explores how a committee of experts make a joint decision. Students should have a solid background in game theory.
Chan: 2 hours

180.628 Economic Development

A review of experience in less-developed countries (LDCs) since 1945, theories of development, economic planning in the LDC context, and models of the development process. Corequisites: 180.601, 180.603
Gersovitz: 2 hours

180.633 Econometrics

Mathematical models of economic behavior and the use of statistical methods for testing economic theories and estimating economic parameters. Subject matter will vary from year to year; statistical methods, such as linear regression, multivariate analysis, and identification, estimation and testing in simultaneous equation models, will be stressed. Prerequisites: Statistics Inference(180.636), Microeconomic Theory (180.601), Mathematical Economics (180.614). People who wish to audit need the same prerequisites.
Hu: 3 hours

180.636 Statistical Inference

Theory and applications of statistical inference. Topics include probability and sampling, distribution theory, estimation, hypothesis testing and simple regression analysis. Statistical applications will be drawn from economics. Prerequisites: differential calculus and linear algebra. Limited to graduate students in economics except by permission of the chair.
Shum: 2 hours

180.637 Microeconometrics I

This is a graduate course covering many of the major econometric techniques that are used in applied work in microeconomics. These include qualitative and limited dependent variables; switching regression and selection bias models; treatment-effect models; duration models; panel data models; GMM for panel data; related time-series techniques; and other topics as they come up. Prerequisites: Statistics Inference(180.636), Microeconomic Theory (180.601-602) and Econometrics (180.633). People who wish to audit need the same prerequisites.
Woutersen: 2 hours (Spring 2007)

180.638 Microeconometrics II

In this course techniques that are used in applied research in microeconomics are introduced. Focus is on a particular class of models, namely discrete choice models. Well-known models in this class are the logit and probit models. Models that have better properties involve high-dimensional integrals, and this leads us to a discussion of simulation estimation. Finally, dynamic decision models for forward looking agents who face irreversible decisions are introduced. As an application some models in economic demograpy are considered.Prerequisite: Statistics Inference (180.636), Microeconomic Theory (180.601-602) and Microeconometrics I (180.637). People who wish to audit need the same prerequisites.
Hu: 2 hours

180.642 International Monetary Economics

A link between the balance of payments and asset accumulation /decumulation , microeconomics of international finance and open-economy macroeconomics. The section on open-economy macroeconomics covers approaches to balance-of -payments adjustments, theories of exchange rate determination and monetary, fiscal and exchange-market policies under fixed and flexible rate regimes. Corequisites: 180.601, 180.603
Gruber: 2 hours

180.651 Labor Economics

First term: theories of the allocation of time and supply of labor, human capital, demand for labor, market equilibrium, and income distribution. As time allows, other topics, such as unemployment, unions, and compensating differences will be discussed. Second term: current topics in labor economics. The content will vary from year to year. Likely areas include nature vs. nurture in the determination of earnings, the function(s) of unions the question of the existence of dual labor markets, and internal markets with specific human capital. Prerequisite: 180.601 Corequisite for 652: 180.633-634.
Moffitt: 2 hours

180.654 Empirical Methods in Risk & Uncerntainty

This doctoral course will provide tools and methods to test the models and measure the parameters of interest in the microeconomics of decision-making under uncertainty. Prerequisite: 180.101-102, 180.334.
Shore: 2 hours

180.671-672 Industrial Organization

First term: An investigation of firm behavior in imperfectly competitive industries from a game-theoretic perspective. Firm decision making with respect to price and quantity, entry an d exit, and investment will be explored. Both static and dynamic theories will be presented to address questions related to the intensity of competition and the creation and maintenance of market dominance. The course is largely, though not exclusively, theoretical in content. Though no background in game theory is required, students are encouraged to take 180.618 or some other game theory course concurrently.

Second term: The emphasis in this course is on empirical analysis of firm behavior. The first part of the course focuses on models of the internal organization of the firm. The second part considers empirical analysis of firm behavior in markets, with an emphasis on the "new industrial economics." Prerequisite: 180.601
Harrington, Shum : 2 hours

180.662 Empirical Asset Pricing

Students learn some of the key features of asset-pricee behavior. They also study how researchers test theory, focusing on the advantages and disadvantages of these research designs. The intuition behind practical econometric tools is developed and applied to assent-pricing questions.
Duffee: 2 hours

180.694 Applied Microeoconomics Workshop

180.695 Microeconomic Theory Workshop

180.696 Macroeconomics Workshop