600

For graduate students only. This course covers current topics in income inequality and poverty within both developed and developing countries. For both inequality and poverty, students will study the various methods of economic measurement and identify recent dynamic trends. Empirical evidence will be used to scrutinize and explore current theoretical arguments aimed at explaining the trends. The course will analyze contemporary policies at both the country level and within global institutions (IMF, World Bank, bilateral aid programs) aimed at alleviating poverty and lessening inequality, and examine the linkages among inequality, poverty, growth, education technology and globalization.

For graduate students only. The course teaches students to use economic concepts to critically evaluate social, political and business decisions regarding environmental resource use, environmental regulation and environmental degradation. Students will gain insight into how to respond, as business decision-makers, to environmental regulations and to increased global competition for scarce resources.

For graduate students only. This course introduces students to the global economic environment within which all modern business firms operate. The external factors considered, which directly or indirectly impact business decision-making and operations, include: domestic and foreign interest rates, exchange rate policies, foreign investment, overseas economic conditions, and international trade and capital flows. A primary objective of the course is to introduce students to major contemporary economic issues that are of international significance.

For graduate students only. The course explores U.S. antitrust law. Economic analysis is used to understand the motivations behind antitrust laws and to evaluate their success. Students will: 1) explore the social losses that can accompany market-power and why American society has chosen antitrust to deal with these consequences; 2) learn that collusive price fixing and market allocation communications and agreements are per se felony offenses, and that violators have been and continue to be sentenced to jail terms; and 3) analyze recent antitrust cases to understand the broad structure of antitrust law and to show the relevance of antitrust in the American business environment.

For graduate students only. The course will examine major economic and financial issues related to emerging markets, with a particular emphasis on the BRIC countries (Brazil, Russia, India and China). The following topics will be considered: Economic liberalization program undertaken by emerging markets in recent decades; Growth drivers in the emerging markets; Financial sector challenges facing key emerging markets; and, monetary policy challenges faced by emerging markets.

For graduate students only. The Economics of Organizations uses the business-related tenets of economics to generate a modern, consistent, formal framework for strategic decision-making. After introducing intermediate microeconomic theory, the course uses economic intuition to address cost issues ranging from outsourcing to the addition of new product lines, agency issues from explicit contract theory to the multi-task principle and team production, and imperfect competition issues ranging from Bertrand pricing to the measurement of market competition using Herfindahl indexes. The international dimension is integrated throughout the course in establishing the competitive organizational form for the firm given the market in which it competes.

May be used to satisfy practicum requirements.

A course offered at the discretion of the ECO department. Subject may focus on a topic of current interest in the field, training in a specific area of the field, or a topic that is of interest to a particular group of students.

For graduate students only. Contemporary topics in economics.