SA.310 (International Economics)

A detailed summary of microeconomic theory using calculus with a focus on policy issues. Highlights the key microeconomic issues related to international economics issues. Much more rigorous, analytic and mathematical than current MA course. This course is open to enrollment by MIEF students only.

A mathematical presentation of open economy macroeconomic models of short/long term equilibrium and growth. A review of monetary/fiscal policy as well as measurement issues. More focus on models and quantifying impacts rather than just shifting of curves as with current MA course.This course is open to enrollment by MIEF students only.

This course provides a practical framework for analyzing businesses, interpreting financial information, and understanding how opportunities are presented for decision making. Students gain an understanding of how investment opportunities are assessed, both qualitatively and quantitatively. They learn to ask the right questions, interpret financial metrics, build a base valuation model, and present their findings to investors. The first part focuses on understanding the financial value of an investment opportunity. Students work through a guided case study while learning analytical tools investors use to evaluate businesses. Tools include financial statement analysis, investment metrics, and income valuation methods in order to help understand how investors gather information, analyze financial performance, and estimate the value of a company. The second part focuses on applying these tools in an investment decision-making context. Students will shift from learning the analytical framework to preparing their own investment analysis. Topics include credit analysis, risk assessment, and developing an investment thesis. The course will conclude with students presenting and defending their investment analysis with feedback from practitioners in the field. This course is open to enrollment by MIEF students only.

Prerequisite(s): SA.310.722[C] OR SA.510.102[C]

Presentation of the classic and modern models of trade between countries and the issues related to trade policy in the global economy. More detailed, analytic and mathematical than current MA course. This course is open to enrollment by MIEF students only.

The course will introduce a range of topics in labor economics, including theories of labor supply and labor demand, labor market equilibrium, unemployment, investments in education and training, discrimination, patterns of inequality, and technological progress and inequality. After working through theory, we will discuss applications to important public policy issues including minimum wage and employment protection laws, international trade and labor markets, active labor market policies (both motivations for and performance of different strategies for helping unemployed workers find jobs), social insurance systems and their influence on the labor market, and retirement decisions and the labor market in aging economies. Applications to policy questions will provide insight into how labor supply and labor demand decisions differ across the institutional and economic contexts of lower-, middle- and upper-income economies.Taught by John Giles

This course reviews the measuring methodology of several concepts that are widely used in macroeconomics. First, how exactly is the data for nominal and real GDP assembled? Second, how are the prices of a consumption basket aggregated into the consumer price index? Third, how are effective exchange rates measured and what are differences in methodology across reporting agencies? Fourth, to what extent economic activity across countries is converging.

This class is intended to be provide students with a more in-depth examination of certain empirical methods that are used in macroeconomics. It will be based on a collection of research papers that use a range of such methods. Lectures will involve discussions of empirical methods combined with close study of papers, which will help students acquire an in-depth understanding of the techniques employed within them. In addition, the class will also help develop expertise in the exposition and presentation of such papers.

This is an advanced course on open economy macroeconomics. The main purpose of the course is to cultivate and develop the ability to use formal theoretical models to interpret and understand the complex economic reality around us. Topics include current account determination, the relationship between saving and investment, imperfections in international capital markets, insurance mechanisms, the role of the real exchange rate, and fiscal policy. This course is open to enrollment by MIEF students only.

Prerequisite(s): SA.310.724[C]

Introduces quantitative tools and framework of financial decision-making. Examines present-value techniques, pricing of financial instruments, trade-off between risk and return, portfolio theory, capital budgeting, financial ratio analysis, behavior of financial markets, capital structure decisions, corporate cost of capital issues, option theory and risk management. Approach is rigorous and analytical, and goal is to provide students with conceptual understanding of the ideas of financial theory as well as the quantitative methods necessary to pursue careers involving financial decision-making. This course is open to enrollment by MIEF students only.

Inter-temporal macroeconomics models involving capital flows and determination of asset prices and equilibrium exchange rates. Examination of models of exchange rate regimes, debt sustainability, and other global macro topics. Focus on intertemporal issues and general equilibrium models is not covered in MA version of course. This course is open to enrollment by MIEF students only.

Although the size of credit markets varies across countries, reflecting the level of economic development, its industrial structure and its regulatory regime, globally, credit markets are huge, surpassing by far equity markets as a source of finance for both the private and public sectors. McKinsey estimates that, in 2007, total global financial assets were $225 trillion, of which only $50 trillion was equity, the remainder represented various types of credit instruments. The recent Global Financial Crisis had a significant impact on credit markets, something that will be discussed repeatedly during the course. This course will examine credit markets globally, with a specific focus on understanding the particular nature of credit risk. After an overview and definitions, the mathematics of fixed income instruments will be covered. There will then follow two sections on private sector credit risk, one each for the real and banking sectors. A significant part of the course will then incorporate what has been learned in analyzing private sector credit into a discussion of sovereign credit risk. This course is open to enrollment by MIEF students only.

Prerequisite(s): SA.310.722[C]

This course examines the role of financial institutions and money in the international economic system. The course begins with an overview of what financial institutions are and what they do. The course will then study the causes of financial crises and the impact that they have on local and global economies. Then this course will study international financial regulation and the impact of interest rate movements on banks. The class will close by studying the new area of digital assets (e.g. Bitcoin, central bank digital currencies (CBDC), stablecoins) and will discuss the potential role they may play in our financial system.

While this course is about the main international financial organizations, the bulk of the course is about the International Monetary Fund (IMF), the pre-eminent global economic and financial institution. There will be two primary focuses of the course. First, we will study the international financial organizations and the international monetary system from an institutional and historical perspective. Second (and this will form the majority of the course), we will focus on the analytical methods used at the IMF to perform country macroeconomic analysis, specifically, financial programming.This course is open to enrollment by MIEF students only.

Prerequisite(s): SA.100.304[C] OR SA.310.724[C]

This course introduces students to the challenges of central banking in emerging economies while exploring its traditional as well as non-traditional role in economic management. The course topics include monetary policy and transmission mechanism, exchange rate policy, interest rate corridor, role of central bank in economic development, fiscal dominance, and financial stability. It also analyzes the implications of quantitative easing, fiscal stimulus, and austerity measures for emerging markets along with new developments like central bank digital currencies and central banking during the Covid crisis. Calculus and econometrics are desired but not necessary.This course is open to enrollment by MIEF students only.

Prerequisite(s): SA.100.304[C] OR SA.310.724[C]

The goal of this course is to provide students with an introduction to key methods of quantitative policy analysis and impact evaluation used to analyze policy relevant questions in developing countries. We develop the statistical toolkit of regression analysis, reviewing the bivariate regression model and then continuing with multiple regression, and explore how these methods are applied to policy analysis in five benchmark techniques: randomized trials, direct regression analysis, instrumental variables, regression discontinuity, and difference in differences. We emphasize the distinction between regression as a statistical tool and the additional context knowledge (and occasionally assumptions) that are required to address causal policy questions. We will rely on empirical microeconomic studies (mostly in developing countries) to analyze behavior under different types of market failures and to evaluate the impacts of policy interventions.Pre-requisites: Statistics, econometrics, and microeconomics. Previous knowledge of STATA will be helpful.This course is open to enrollment by MIEF students only.

This course introduces students to the study of economic development. Different disciplines have different methods – this class uses the tools of economics to examine the reasons why some places are so much more prosperous than others. Specifically, we will use mathematical modeling and econometrics to develop and test theories of economic growth, structural transformation and poverty alleviation. While the core questions in economic development could be examined anywhere in the world, we will focus on low- and middle-income countries, with some references to the historical literature in richer countries like the United States. This class is targeted at anyone considering a career in research or policymaking in developing countries, but will also provide useful skills and insights to those working on issues of poverty and growth in more developed countries as well.This course is open to enrollment by MIEF students only.

This is an applied course on big data analytics with focus on data mining. R will be the main tool for problem solving with Python as the other option. Topics will cover data visualization, exploratory analysis, association rules, classification and regression trees, deep learning (neural networks), text mining, social network analysis, etc. Prerequisites:General understanding and experience with statistical models, including multivariable regression models, analysis of variance, and test of hypotheses.No previous programing experience is required, and the textbook offers extended code that can be used directly or modified.

Prerequisite(s): SA.100.501[C] OR SA.310.771[C]

This course provides an introduction to environmental economics at the masters level. The goal of the course is to introduce students to the theory and practice of environmental economics. This course will include the application of econometrics and micro theory to environmental economics. The course will primarily focuses on the analytical tools used in environmental economics. The course provides a broad overview of the field by focusing on numerous topics and it draws on both classic and recent research to provide a solid foundation in environmental economics and illustrate the frontier of the field.

Policy decisions require difficult trade-offs of costs and benefits; there is no such thing as a free lunch. Hence, the course will use specific policy areas – including health care, transportation and infrastructure, international aid and development, education, and environmental issues – as examples to provide students with the concepts and tools of cost-benefit analysis to analyze the role of government intervention, its justification, opportunity costs, and implications for efficiency, fairness and effectiveness. The course will cover key theories and concepts that underpin most discussions of public policy on the role and financing of the government sector, including public goods (both national and global), externalities and market failure, tax policy, social welfare economics, market structure, monetary and fiscal policy. We will then place cost benefit within the broader public finance framework. Using these concepts, the course will highlight some of the challenging real-world public policy issues confronting governments in different parts of the world. Students will learn how to develop and apply cost-benefit analysis techniques to the evaluation of public policies.This course is open to enrollment by MIEF students only.

This course covers the basics of econometrics, representing the first half of the econometrics sequence. Statistical concepts of confidence intervals and hypothesis testing will be reviewed in the context of simple and multiple regression analysis using the normal, t, and F distributions. Assumptions made when using regression or function fitting analysis will be examined in the context of multiple regression using matrices. Matrix algebra will be reviewed. Non-linear relationships and relationships involving qualitative variables will be covered as well as understanding the errors involved in prediction. The statistical package Stata will be used throughout this course following a brief use of Excel. Students will prepare a short paper presenting the results of a regression analysis. This course is open to enrollment by MIEF students only.

A mathematical presentation of econometrics from OLS and the violation of the classical assumptions through advanced econometric techniques for dealing with common econometric problems. Moves faster and further than MA version of the course. Involves lab work.This course is open to enrollment by MIEF students only.

This course is designed to teach the tools and techniques of applied statistics and empirical microeconomics. The class focus is on how the data generation process of collecting sample data from a population frame affects inference with a focus on cross-sectional and panel data. The class examples and exercises will focus on issues related to international development and domestic social issues (e.g. poverty, education, health, labor issues). The emphasis is on applications, not derivations, of methodology. The course will entail a significant amount of analysis of household survey data using primarily Stata. This course covers some of the same topics as Quantitative Methods I and II, both as a tool to reinforce the material and also to provide more applied examples of the estimation issues.This course is open to enrollment by MIEF students only.

Prerequisite(s): SA.100.401[C] OR SA.310.771[C] OR SA.340.710[C]

This course will cover time series analysis with a particular emphasis on aspects of time series analysis that are employed in the empirical analysis and modeling of financial and macroeconomic time series. The course will cover theoretical aspects of time series analysis but will focus on applied and empirical aspects of time series analysis. This course is quantitative and will build upon concepts that have already been learned in previous econometrics courses such as OLS estimation, finite sample and asymptotic properties of OLS and MLE estimators, and hypothesis testing.This course is open to enrollment by MIEF students only.

Prerequisite(s): SA.310.771[C] OR ( SA.310.805[C] AND SA.100.401[C] )

This course is an introduction to practical empirical economic modeling and forecasting. It focuses on the methodology, practice, and implementation of econometric modeling and forecasting with macroeconomic time series. The course's first part (empirical model building) considers data properties, including integration and cointegration; dynamic specification, including error correction models; and model evaluation and design, including computer-automated model selection algorithms and impulse indicator saturation. The course's second part (empirical economic forecasting) focuses on the roles of forecasting, including in policymaking; the generation and evaluation of forecasts; sources of forecast error; and robustification and improvement of forecasts. Throughout, the course includes discussion of the underlying theory, live data-based presentations of substantive empirical analyses, and hands-on learning in class. The latter two aspects help demonstrate the approach to econometric modeling and forecasting and address empirical questions as they arise. Examples with single-equation and multiple-equation models using different countries' data motivate and illustrate the concepts involved. This course is open to enrollment by only MIEF students.

Prerequisite(s): SA.310.771[C] OR ( SA.310.801[C] AND ( SA.100.401[C] OR SA.340.710[C] ) )

Being a successful professional involves providing reliable answers to practical questions. Obtaining reliable answers benefits from two components. First, one needs a theoretical framework used to organize the data. Second, one needs a suitable statistical method to summarize the implications and properties of the data to develop an intelligible answer to the question at hand. Unfortunately, there is no “cookbook” available that could turn an amateur into a successful professional. Hence this course prepares students to develop the habit of asking the two important questions for professional life: How do you know and what is the alternative? A successful applied research project integrates these two questions into providing reliable answers.

This workshop will introduce Stata and illustrate how to use the software for practical applications, with attention to manual coding. We will cover basic applications - such as simple OLS regressions and charting - as well as binary dependent variable modelling, time-series features, and panel data techniques. The theoretical concepts underpinning empirical analyses will also be reviewed. These workshops are for MIEF students only.

This workshop provides an introduction to analyzing data using the statistical programming language, R. It covers the fundamentals of the language, along with the essentials of data ingestion, cleaning, manipulation, and visualization. R is an open-source software environment for statistical computing and graphics used by many economists, governments, and private-sector firms (especially consulting firms). Before coming to the workshop, students should have R installed on their laptops. See the syllabus for instructions on how to install R. https://www.r-project.orgThese workshops are for MIEF students only.

This workshop provides an introduction to the Python programming language with a particular emphasis on analyzing data in Python. Python is an open-source, general purpose programming language used widely across a number of industries and is arguably one of the most popular programming languages in the world today. This workshop will cover environment setup, Python fundamentals, and the foundations of data analysis using the popular pandas and numpy libraries. Open to MIEF students only.

This workshop showcases how R can be leveraged for the MIEF Capstone project using previously submitted capstone work as a case-study. It covers the use of R for setting up end-to-end analytics pipelines, with particular emphasis on data manipulation for plotting, implementations of workhorse econometric models within R, and reporting. All functions and code explored will be provided for future capstone work. Before comping to the workshop, students should have R installed on their laptops, and should come with an understanding of the fundamentals of the R programming language. No enrollment limit. MIEF Students Only.

The capstone course will consistent of small groups of students working on a practical project or a current policy issue in their area of interest. The students will delve deeply into the project using the tools they have acquired and prepare a detailed presentation to be made to the class, faculty, as well as outside professionals. Topics may include the following: current account sustainability, exchange rate exposure, investment case study, studies on financial markets, and growth and debt sustainability studies.This course is open to enrollment by MIEF students only.