Corequisites: ECON UN1155 How a market economy determines the relative prices of goods, factors of production, and the allocation of resources and the circumstances under which it does it efficiently. Why such an economy has fluctuations and how they may becontrolled.
Required Discussion section for ECON UN1105 Principles of Economics
Prerequisites: ECON UN1105 Covers five areas within the general field of international economics: (i) microeconomic issues of why countries trade, how the gains from trade are distributed, and protectionism; (ii) macroeconomic issues such as exchange rates, balance of payments and open economy macroeconomic adjustment, (iii) the role of international institutions (World Bank, IMF, etc); (iv) economic development and (v) economies in transition.
Financial accounting is concerned with the preparation and public dissemination
of financial reports designed to reflect corporate performance and financial
condition. By providing timely, relevant, and reliable information, these reports
facilitate the decision-making of investors, creditors, and other interested parties.
Financial markets depend on the information contained in these reports to
evaluate executives, estimate future stock returns, assess firms’ riskiness, and
allocate society’s resources to their most productive uses.
This course provides a base level of knowledge needed by corporate executives
to understand and discuss corporate financial statements. The process of
learning how various business activities impact financial statements will also give
you opportunities to learn and think about the business activities, themselves.
Prerequisites: ECON UN3211 and ECON UN3213 and STAT UN1201 Institutional nature and economic function of financial markets. Emphasis on both domestic and international markets (debt, stock, foreign exchange, eurobond, eurocurrency, futures, options, and others). Principles of security pricing and portfolio management; the Capital Asset Pricing Model and the Efficient Markets Hypothesis.
Prerequisites: ECON UN1105 and MATH UN1101 and (MATH UN1201 or MATH UN1207) The determination of the relative prices of goods and factors of production and the allocation of resources.
Required Discussion section for ECON UN3211 intermediate Economics.
Prerequisites: (MATH UN1101 or MATH UN1207) and ECON UN1105 or the equivalent. Corequisites: MATH UN1201 This course covers the determination of output, employment, inflation and interest rates. Topics include economic growth, business cycles, monetary and fiscal policy, consumption and savings and national income accounting.
Discussion section for ECON UN3213 Intermediate Macro. Student must register for a section.
Prerequisites: ECON UN3211 and ECON UN3213 or the equivalent. Introduction to the principles of money and banking. The intermediary institutions of the American economy and their historical developments, current issues in monetary and financial reform.
Prerequisites: (ECON UN3211 or ECON UN3213) and (MATH UN1201 or MATH UN1207) and STAT UN1201 Modern econometric methods; the general linear statistical model and its extensions; simultaneous equations and the identification problem; time series problems; forecasting methods; extensive practice with the analysis of different types of data.
Required discussion section for ECON UN3412: Intro to Econometrics
Prerequisites: ECON UN3211 and ECON UN3213 and MATH UN2010 Students must register for required discussion section. Corequisites: MATH UN2500 or MATH GU4061 The course provides a rigorous introduction to microeconomics. Topics will vary with the instructor but will include consumer theory, producer theory, general equilibrium and welfare, social choice theory, game theory and information economics. This course is strongly recommended for students considering graduate work in economics. Discussion section required.
Prerequisites: ECON UN3211 and ECON UN3213 and MATH UN2010 Students must register for lecture course ECON GU4211 Corequisites: MATH UN2500MATH GU4061 Required discussion section for ECON GU4211 Advanced Microeconomics. The course provides a rigorous introduction to microeconomics. Topics will vary with the instructor but will include consumer theory, producer theory, general equilibrium and welfare, social choice theory, game theory and information economics. This course is strongly recommended for students considering graduate work in economics. Discussion section required.
Prerequisites: ECON UN3211 and ECON UN3213 and STAT Un1201 This course takes New York as our laboratory. Economics is about individual choice subject to constraints and the ways that choices sum up to something often much more than the parts. The fundamental feature of any city is the combination of those forces that bring people together and those that push them apart. Thus both physical and social space will be central to our discussions. The underlying theoretical and empirical analysis will touch on spatial aspects of urban economics, regional, and even international economics. We will aim to see these features in New York City taken as a whole, as well as in specific neighborhoods of the city. We will match these theoretical and empirical analyses with readings that reflect close observation of specific subjects. The close observation is meant to inspire you to probe deeply into a topic in order that the tools and approaches of economics may illuminate these issues in a fresh way.
Prerequisites: ECON UN3211 and ECON UN3213 The study of industrial behavior based on game-theoretic oligopoly models. Topics include pricing models, strategic aspects of business practice, vertical integration, and technological innovation.
Prerequisites: ECON UN3211 and ECON UN3213 and STAT UN1201 An introduction to the economics principles underlying the financial decisions of firms. The topics covered include bond and stock valuations, capital budgeting, dividend policy, market efficiency, risk valuation, and risk management. For information regarding REGISTRATION for this course, go to: http://econ.columbia.edu/registration-information.
Prerequisites: ECON UN3211 and ECON UN3213. This course examines labor markets through the lens of economics. In broad terms, labor economics is the study of the exchange of labor services for wages—a category that takes in a wide range of topics. Our objective in this course is to lay the foundations for explaining labor market phenomena within an economic framework and subsequently apply this knowledge-structure to a select set of questions. Throughout this process we will discuss empirical research, which will highlight the power (as well as the limitations) of employing economic models to real-world problems. By the end of this course we will have the tools/intuition to adequately formulate and critically contest arguments concerning labor markets.
Prerequisites: ECON UN3211 and ECON UN3213 Introduction to the systematic treatment of game theory and its applications in economic analysis.
Prerequisites: ECON UN3211 and ECON UN3213 Types of market failures and rationales for government intervention in the economy. Benefit-cost analysis and the theory of public goods. Positive and normative aspects of taxation. The U.S. tax structure.
Prerequisites: ECON UN3211 and ECON UN3213 This course studies gender gaps, their extent, determinants and consequences. The focus will be on the allocation of rights in different cultures and over time, why women's rights have typically been more limited and why most societies have traditionally favored males in the allocation of resources.
Prerequisites: ECON UN3211 and ECON UN3213 The theory of international trade, comparative advantage and the factor endowments explanation of trade, analysis of the theory and practice of commercial policy, economic integration. International mobility of capital and labor; the North-South debate.
Prerequisites: ECON UN3211 and ECON UN3213. Econ GU4505 is an
elective in the economics major. The course develops models for the
analysis of the determinants of international capital flows, trade
imbalances, and exchange rates. The models are then used as the basis
for the discussion of topics such as Global Imbalances, Uncertainty and
the Current Account, The Global Saving Glut, Purchasing Power Parity,
Sudden Stops, Real Exchange Rates and Productivity, Covered Interest
Rate Parity, Uncovered Interest Rate Parity, Borrowing Externalities and
Optimal Capital Controls, Overborrowing, Macroeconomic Adjustment under
Flexible and Fixed Exchange Rates, Twin Deficits, and Balance of
Payment Crises.
In lieu of the failure of legislatures to pass comprehensive carbon taxes, there is growing pressure on the financial system to address the risks of global warming. One set of pressures is to account for the heightened physical risks due to extreme weather events and potential climate tipping points. Another set of pressures are to find approaches to incentivize corporations to meet the goals set out in the Paris Treaty of 2015. These approaches include (1) mandates or restrictions to only hold companies with decarbonization plans, (2) development of negative emissions technologies such as direct-air capture and (3) promotion of natural capital markets that can be used to offset carbon emissions. Moreover, financial markets also provide crucial information on expectations and plans of economic agents regarding climate change. This course will cover both models and empirical methodologies that are necessary to assess the role of the financial system in addressing global warming.
Prerequisites: (Econ UN3211) and (ECON UN3213) and (STAT UN1201) This course uses economic theory and empirical evidence to study the links between financial markets and the real economy. We will consider questions such as: What is the welfare role of finance? How do financial markets affect consumers and firms? How do shocks to the financial system transmit to the real economy? How do financial markets impact inequality?
Prerequisites: ECON UN3211 and ECON UN3213 The world is being transformed by dramatic increases in flows of people, goods and services across nations. Globalization has the potential for enormous gains but is also associated to serious risks. The gains are related to international commerce where the industrial countries dominate, while the risks involve the global environment, poverty and the satisfaction of basic needs that affect in great measure the developing nations. Both are linked to a historical division of the world into the North and the South-the industrial and the developing nations. Key to future evolution are (1) the creation of new markets that trade privately produced public goods, such as knowledge and greenhouse gas emissions, as in the Kyoto Protocol; (2) the updating of the Breton Woods Institutions, including the creation of a Knowledge Bank and an International Bank for Environmental Settlements.
Prerequisites: ECON UN3211 and ECON UN3213 and ECON UN3412 Selected topics in microeconomics.
Prerequisites: ECON UN3211 and ECON UN3213 and ECON UN3412 Selected topics in microeconomics.
Prerequisites: ECON UN3211 and ECON UN3213 and ECON UN3412 Selected topics in microeconomics.
Prerequisites: ECON UN3211 and ECON UN3213 and ECON UN3412 Selected topics in microeconomics.
Prerequisites: ECON UN3211 and ECON UN3213 and ECON UN3412 Selected topics in microeconomics.
Prerequisites: ECON UN3211 and ECON UN3213 and ECON UN3412 Selected topics in microeconomics.
Prerequisites: ECON UN3211 and ECON UN3213 and ECON UN3412 Selected topics in microeconomics.
Prerequisites: ECON UN3211 and ECON UN3213 and ECON UN3412 Registration information is posted on the departments Seminar Sign-up webpage. Selected topics in macroeconomics. Selected topics will be posted on the departments webpage.
Prerequisites: ECON UN3211 and ECON UN3213 and ECON UN3412 and sign-up in the departments office. Registration information is posted on the departments Seminar Sign-up webpage. Analyzing data in a more in-depth fashion than in ECON UN3412. Additional estimation techniques include limited dependent variable and simultaneous equation models. Go to the departments undergraduate Seminar Description webpage for a detailed description.
Prerequisites: ECON UN3211 and ECON UN3213 and ECON UN3412 and the director of the departmental honors programs permission. Students must have a minimum GPA of 3.7 in all required major courses, including calculus and statistics, prior to enrollment. The honors thesis seminar is a year-long course, beginning in the fall semester and ending in the spring semester. Students who have been approved to enter the workshop will be registered for both semesters by the department during the first two weeks of classes; 3 points are earned per semester. This workshop may only be taken by students applying for departmental honors, and it also fulfills the economics seminar requirement for the economics major and all joint majors. Students must see the director during mid-semester registration in the spring to discuss their proposed thesis topic, at which time they will be matched with appropriate faculty who will act as their thesis adviser. Students will meet their adviser over the course of the year at mutually agreed upon times. A rough draft of the thesis will be due during the first week of February in the spring semester, and the final draft will be due three weeks before the last day of classes. Please note that for those joint majors that require two seminars, one in economics and one in the other discipline (i.e. Political Science), the economics senior honors thesis seminar only fulfills the economics seminar requirement.
This is a topics course in industrial organization intended for MA students. The focus of the class is to familiarize students with the way economists in academic, antitrust regulatory and private sector settings approach research questions related to topics such as conduct, pricing, competition or ownership and control in various market structures (e.g., homogenous product, differentiated product, two-sided, vertical markets). The goal of the course is threefold. For each of the market structures considered:
(i)
familiarize you with the foundational economic theories;
(ii)
provide you with the empirical tools you can apply in the future to conduct your own research; and
(iii)
introduce to you key antitrust issues regulators have been focusing on and approaches used in practice to analyze these issues by antitrust economists.
Prerequisites: the director of graduate studies permission. Corequisites: ECON G6410. Consumer and producer behavior; general competitive equilibrium, welfare and efficiency, behavior under uncertainty, intertemporal allocation and capital theory, imperfect competition, elements of game theory, problems of information, economies with price rigidities.
Prerequisites: the director of graduate studies permission. Concept of full employment. Models of underemployment and theory applicability, determinants of consumption and of investment, multiplier and accelerator analysis, an introduction to monetary macroeconomics, the supply side and inflation. Integration of macroeconomics with microeconomic and monetary analysis.
Prerequisites: the instructors permission. This course develops theory of designing markets--namely, ;mechanisms; of allocating resources--that are efficient, fair and non-manipulable. Understanding the incentives participants face under alternative mechanisms will be a central theme of the course. Specifically, the course will consist of two parts. The first part deals with environments where monetary transfers can be used, and focuses on topics such as optimal nonlinear pricing, optimal auction design, property rights assignment, dynamic mechanisms and assignment games/sponsored search auctions in Internet advertising. The second part concerns market design without monetary transfers and discusses matching theory as a primarily tool for analyzing the topic. Specifically, we shall discuss matching of agents on one side with agents on the other and matching of agents to indivisible resources/positions, and apply the theories to problems of house allocation, centralized labor market matching, and school choice.
Prerequisites: ECON G6216 and G6412, or the instructor's permission. This course deals with business cycle theories and methods for evaluating such theories. The course extends the canonical real business cycle model to analyze models with cyclical variation in markups, models of endogenous fluctuations, and models of news-driven short-run fluctuations. Attention is given to numerical methods to approximate the dynamics implied by stochastic general equilibrium models, with particular emphasis given to perturbation methods. The course will also include an operational introduction to full and limited-information approaches to the estimation of DSGE models.
Networks help us describe the complex interactions that occur among large populations of distinct
entities. Some have argued that their incorporation into economic models represents a paradigm
change for the ?eld. This course will introduce you to the central questions in current networks
research as well as the tools and methods used to study networks in economic theory. Topics we
will cover include network games and interventions, di?usion processes, network formation, social
learning and opinion dynamics, and networked markets. The course is divided into two halves. The
rst half will consist of lectures on these topics. In the second half, we will read and discuss recent
research papers.
Prerequisites: ECON G6211 and ECON G6212. This course provides an overview of topics in industrial organization (IO) economics. Its goals are to survey the main outlines of modern IO, to develop key theoretical ideas, to demonstrate important techniques, to link theory to empirical work, and to relate theoretical and empirical results to policy issues. Empirical two-period models. Empirical single-agent and multiple-agent dynamic models.
This course introduces the students to the field of Organizational Economics. We combine theoretical and empirical methods to study the nature, design, and performance of organizations. Organizations, such as firms, bureaucracies, and political parties, live in a second-best world, where inefficiencies are inevitable. Our goal is to understand and measure these inefficiencies, study their causes and how to minimize them. This course is divided in two parts of equal length. The first part introduces a few of the main theoretical models and findings from the organizational-economics literature. The second part focuses on how to bring the models to the data. By design, the course is intended for a broad set of students: those who are theoretically inclined, those who are empirically inclined, and those who are both. Many of the tools and skills that are developed in this course will be useful not only within organizational economics but, more broadly, to other fields such as industrial organization, political economy, development economics. Our ultimate goal is to accelerate the students' transition toward conducting their own independent research.
Prerequisites: ECON G6211, ECON G6212 or the instructor's permission. Survey of recent microeconomic work on firm behavior in developing countries, with a primarily empirical focus. Topics include: credit constraints, contracting frictions, reputations and networks, learning and technology adoption, agency issues within firms, productivity estimation, international dimensions of firms behavior, and debates around industrial policy.
Prerequisites: (ECON GR6211) and (ECON GR6212) and (ECON GR6215) and (ECON GR6216) and (ECON GR6411) and (ECON GR6412) and This course covers a range of challenges faced by governments in low- and middle-income countries. The course will cover both applied theory papers and empirical papers applying the latest empirical methods.
Corequisites: ECON G6410 and the director of graduate studies permission. Introduction to the general linear model and its use in econometrics, including the consequences of departures from the standard assumptions.
This is the second course of the second year PhD econometrics sequence with emphasis on both economic applications and computationally intense methods for analysis of large and/or complex models. Students can attend the whole sequence or only one of them. While the details of the econometric techniques will be discussed extensively, the core and focus of the course is on the applications of these techniques to the study of actual data. Students will be practiced in econometric methods through computer-based exercises. Prerequisites: Students should have a good understanding of graduate econometrics and should have taken ECON G6411 and G6412.
This graduate course will develop both models and empirical methods that are necessary to assess the role of the financial system in addressing the risks of global warming. The course will take a continuous-time approach and feature financial markets that provide crucial information on expectations and plans of economic agents regarding climate change. After a primer on continuous time methods and stochastic growth models, we will cover a number of topics including: an asset pricing approach to integrated assessment models, pricing natural capital such as tropical rain forecasts, mitigation of weather disaster risks that are becoming more frequent with global warming, sustainable finance mandates in fostering the transition of the industrial sector to net-zero emissions, corporate adaptation strategies to heatwaves, and integrating climate tipping points and financial frictions into assessments.
Prerequisites: ECON G6412, ECON G6411, ECON G6215, ECON G6211. Corequisites: ECON G6212, ECON G6216, ECON G6412. This course will critically examine mainstream approaches to economic theory and practice, particularly in the areas of macroeconomic stabilization policy, poverty reduction, economic development, environmental sustainability, and racial and gender inequality. Topics will vary from year to year, but may include responses to the credit crisis and Great Recession, global warming and international negotiations, globalization, the measurement of poverty and inequality, different approaches to poverty reduction, AIDS and malaria, mass imprisonment, childrens wellbeing, the IMF and the World Bank, intellectual property in an international context, racial disparities in life expectancy, public pension systems in developed countries, health care, and homelessness. The course will also examine biases in economic discourse, both among policy makers and scholars.
Prerequisites: ECON G6411 and G6412. Students will make presentations of original research.
Prerequisites: G6215 and G6216. Open-economy macroeconomics, computational methods for dynamic equilibrium analysis, and sources of business cycles.
Prerequisites: the instructors permission. Students will make presentations of original research.
Prerequisites: the instructors permission. Students will make presentations of original research.
Prerequisites: G6215, G6216, G6211, G6212, G6411, G6412. Students will make presentation of original research in Microeconomics.
Prerequisites: G6215, G6216, G6211, G6212, G6411, G6412. Students will make presentations of original research in Microeconomics.
Columbia faculty and guest speakers present research related to Labor and Public Economics.