Global Arc

The course deals with the judgments required to analyze and communicate information about economic events of a firm through financial accounting. The first several classes deal with concepts of asset, liability, owners' equity, revenue, expense and the accounting processes that lead to the financial statements. Next follows an analysis of the components of financial statements: long-term liabilities, revenue recognition and income management, inventories, long-term assets, impairment and leasing chaos, off-balance sheet financing, and current controversies such as income tax inversions. Rudiments of financial analysis and valuation.

A survey of the field of investments with special emphasis on the valuation of financial assets. Issues studied include how portfolios of assets should be formed, how to measure and control risk, how to evaluate investment performance, and how to test alternative investment strategies and asset pricing models. Prerequisites: ECO 202, ECO 310 and MAT 175 or equivalent. ECO 202 or equivalent may be taken concurrently, but students would remain responsible for statistical concepts as they arise in this course. Two lectures, one precept.

Investigates the financing decisions of companies and financial institutions in the wider context of the workings of financial markets. Topics include capital budgeting, capital structure choice, risk management, liquidity, corporate governance, and the interactions between corporate finance and the workings of financial institutions and markets. Prerequisite: ECO 362. Two lectures, one precept.

This course provides an introduction to empirical methods in finance research. The goal is to allow students to gain some experience in working with financial data and learn some empirical methodologies commonly used in finance literature. The goal is not to provide a complete survey of all methodologies used in empirical finance, but rather focus on a selection of topics and study them in depth. Topics covered include asset pricing models, momentum, and derivatives.

These courses will provide an opportunity to apply the concepts and methods studied in economics core courses and electives to analyze the economic problems confronting particular countries or groups of countries. The choice of the country or region, and of the economic problem, will change from year to year. Prerequisites depend on topic. Two 90-minute lectures.

Europe is at a crossroads. Political and economic integration in the European Union (EU) exceeds levels reached in the rest of the world. Economic integration affects trade, migration, agriculture, competition, regions, energy and money. Most euro area economies have been struggling with interlocking crises involving debt, banking and growth, which challenge the viability of monetary union. The EU is now facing a migration crisis. This course studies economic integration in Europe, the ongoing crises, and economic challenges facing EU member countries. It uses economic analysis to study policy issues. Two 90-minute lectures.

European countries have faced sequential crisis episodes since 2008 and the euro area is now one of the few areas where the economy has not yet recovered. How have fiscal imbalances in Greece which weighs less than 5% of the Eurozone GDP put all the system at risk? Can the Economic Monetary Union (EMU) be completed? Or has the EMU come to its final limit and will soon disintegrate? This course will combine basic international macroeconomic theory and political science literature on the European integration to address these questions.

This course examines the transformation of European economies from a circumstance in which Malthusian population pressure on resources was the dominant historical force to one in which the growth of population and income per-capita has become the norm for industrialized countries. This transformation, covering the period from roughly 1200-1900, marks one of history's great changes. Topics include the demographic, technological, and institutional preconditions that supported growth; and the consequences of industrialization to living standards, inequality, and its spread beyond Europe.

Economic analysis of the Chinese economy after 1949. Economic planning, economic reform, economic growth and fluctuations, consumption, environmental problems, population and human capital, banking and financial systems, foreign trade and investment, legal and political systems and current issues. Prerequisites: 100 and 101. Two 90-minute lectures one preceptorial.

Cities play a central role in the economy. But why do they exist? Why do people and firms pay so much money in order to crowd closely together? What forces shape their structure, size, and long-run success? The goal of this course is to answer some of these questions by analyzing cities as economic systems using both theoretical and empirical tools. The theory side of the course covers a standard set of urban models describing both the structure of cities and how they interact as part of larger national economies. The empirical side of the course draws on recent academic papers to introduce some of the econometric tools used to study cities.