University of Pennsylvania Economics Graduate Course Descriptions
Regularly Offered Ph.D. Courses
701 Microeconomic Theory I. Fall.
Prerequisite: Meeting the department's minimal mathematical requirements.
Nonlinear programming, theory of the consumer and producer, general equilibrium.
702 Macroeconomic Theory I. Spring.
Prerequisite: Meeting the department's minimal mathematical requirements;
Economics 701, 703, and 898, or equivalents. Dynamic programming, search
theory, growth theory, asset pricing, business cycles.
703 Microeconomic Theory II. Fall.
Prerequisites: Meeting the department's minimal mathematical requirements.
Game theory, decision making under uncertainty, information economics.
704 Macroeconomic Theory II. Spring.
Prerequisites: Meeting the department's minimal mathematical requirements;
Economics 701, 703, and 898, or equivalents. Equilibrium notions in the
growth model. Economies with distortions. Incomplete markets. Overlapping
generations.
705 Econometrics I: Fundamentals. Fall.
Prerequisite: Meeting the department's minimal mathematical requirements.
Violations of classical linear regression assumptions, nonlinear regression
models (including logit, probit, etc.), diagnostic testing, distributed
lag models, panel data models, identification, linear simultaneous-equations
model.
706 Econometrics II: Methods. Spring.
Prerequisites: Meeting the department's minimal mathematical requirements;
Economics 705 and 898, or equivalents. Analysis in time and frequency
domains, state space representations, Kalman filtering, conditional heteroskedasticity,
nonlinear and non-parametric methods for time series, integration, co-integration,
numerical and simulation techniques.
708 The Economics of Agency, Information, and Incentives. Spring.
Prerequisites: Meeting the department's minimal mathematical requirements;
Economics 898, or equivalents. This course studies the economics of adverse
selection and moral hazard in strategic settings. The primary focus is
on the agency relationship and the structure of agency contracts. Other
settings include auctions, bilateral trading, and the internal organization
of the firm.
712 Topics in Advanced Economic Theory and Mathematical Economics.
Fall and/or Spring.
Topics and prerequisites announced each year.
713 Game Theory. Fall.
Prerequisites: Economics 701. A rigorous introduction to the concepts,
tools, and techniques of the theory of games, with emphasis on those parts
of the theory that are of particular importance in economics. Topics include
games in normal and extensive form, Nash equilibrium, games of incomplete
information and Bayesian equilibrium, signaling games, and repeated games.
714 Quantitative Macroeconomic Theory. Fall. (Postponed Fall 2002
to Spring 2003)
Computation of Equilibria. Calibration of models. Heterogeneous agents,
macroeconomic models.
Macroeconomic Theory I and II (Econ 702 & 704). Computation of Equilibria.
Calibration of models. Heterogeneous agents, macroeconomic models.
716 Equilibrium Theory. Fall.
Prerequisites: The course relies heavily on material covered in Microeconomic
Theory I (Econ 701). This course covers various topics in equilibrium
theory (broadly conceived as the analysis of any model in which the collective
outcome of individual actions in an economic -- or, even more generally,
social setting is described by a system of equations). In recent years,
the focus has been on the theory of equilibrium in a competitive setting
when financial markets are "imperfect," for example, when there
are an incomplete set of financial markets, or when households' transactions
on financial markets are restricted by various conventions or institutions.
721 Econometrics III: Advanced Techniques of Cross-Section Econometrics.
Spring
Prerequisites: Economics 705 and 706. Qualitative response models, panel
data, censoring, truncation, selection bias, errors in variables, latent
variable models, survey design, advanced techniques of semiparametric
estimation and inference in cross-sectional environments. Disequilibrium
models. Methods of simulated moments.
722 Econometrics IV: Advanced Topics of Time-Series Econometrics.
Spring.
Prerequisites: Economics 705, 706. Consistency and asymptotic normality
for m-estimator and for generalized moment estimators. Asymptotics for
integrated and cointegrated time-series. Inference in presence of nuisance
parameters identified only under the alternative: consistent moment tests,
testing for threshold effects, testing for structural breaks. Estimation
of stochastic differential equations from discrete observations: simulated
method of moments, indirect inference. Discrete time GARCH models and
their continuous limits.
730 International Trade Theory and Policy. Fall.
Prerequisites: Economics 701 and 702. Pure theory of international trade,
commercial policy, and trade.
731 International Monetary Theory and Policy. Spring
Prerequisites: Economics 701 and 702. Balance of payments, international
captial movements, and foreign exchange examined against a background
of current theories and policies.
740 Monetary Economics. Spring.
Prerequisites: Economics 703, 704, 705, and 706, or permission of instructor.
The role of money as a medium of exchange and as an asset. Models of the
demand for money.
741 Economic Growth.
Prerequisites: Economics 701 and 702. Theories of economics growth and
their quantitative implications.
750 Public Economics. Fall.
Prerequisites: Economics 701 and 703. Public goods, externalities, uncertainty,
and income redistribution as sources of market failures; private market
and collective choice models as possible correcting mechanisms. Microeconomic
theories of taxation and political models affecting economic variables.
751 Public Economics II. Spring.
Prerequisites: Economics 701 and 703. Expenditures: Alternative theories
of public choice; transfers to the poor; transfers to special interests
and rent seeking; social insurance; publicly provided private goods; public
production and bureaucracy. Taxation: Tax incidence in partial and general
equilibrium; excess burden analysis. Topics on tax incidence and efficiency:
lifetime incidence and excess burden, dynamic incidence, and the open
economy. Normative theories of taxation: Optimal commodity and income
taxation. The political economy of income taxation.
753 Macroeconomic Policy. Spring.
Prerequisite: Economics 702. A review of alternative theories of growth
and business cycles and their relevance for recent history of selected
industrialized countries. Fiscal and monetary policy in a dynamic setting
and their application to current policy issues.
760 Development Economics: Basic Micro Topics. Fall.
Prerequisites: Economics 701 and 705, or permission of instructor. Analysis
of selected topics in economic development related to household/firm (farm)
behavior, including determinants of and the impact of human resources,
contractual arrangements in land, labor and credit markets, investment
and savings. Emphasis on tractable modeling that leads to integrated analysis
given available data.
780 Industrial Organization. Fall.
Prerequisite: Economics 701. Development of microeconomic models to explain
the structure and performance of markets. Among other topics: the conditions
under which monopoly power can be exercised, the relationship between
profit rates and concentration or size, the persistence of profits over
time, industry turnover and interindustry comparisons.
781 Empirical Methods in Industrial Organization.
The goal of the course is to explore links between theory and data in
order to identify and test implications of economic models. Reduced form
and structural approaches will be used to study a variety of topics that
include: Estimation of multiproduct cost functions; detection of collusion,
multimarket contact, and network externalities; asymmetric information:
auctions and nonlinear pricing; price competition and product differentiation;
and complementarities: innovation and organizational design.
Prerequisites: Economics 701. The course will cover topics in oligopolistic
competition, product Selection and the operation of markets under imperfect
information and related subjects.
792 Economics of Labor. Fall.
Prerequisite: Economics 701, 703, 705, and 706. Topics include: Theories
of the supply and demand for labor, wage determination, wage differentials,
labor market discrimination, unemployment, occupational choice and dynamics
of specific labor markets, theory of matching, trade unions. The theory
and empirics of human capital accumulation, intertemporal labor supply,
search, intergenerational mobility of income and wealth, contracts and
bargaining, efficiency wage models, principal/agent models, and signaling
models.
793 Economics of Labor II. Spring.
Prerequisite: Economics 792, or permission of instructor. A continuation
of Economics 792.
897
Basic Mathematics for Economists. Summer.
Functions, differentials and integral calculus, inverse and implicit functions,
extremum value and constrained maximization, vector-valued functions,
economic applications.
898 Elementary Mathematics for Economists. Fall.PDF
898
Vector spaces, linear transformations and matrices, quadratic forms definite
matrices, eigenvalues and similarity transformations, linear difference
and differential equations, point set topology, and fixed point theorems.
980 Topics in Economics.
Topics and prerequisites announced when course is offered.
981 Topics in Economic Theory.
Topics and prerequisites announced when course is offered.
982 Topics in Econometrics.
Topics and prerequisites announced when course is offered.
983 Topics in Microeconomics.
Topics and prerequisites announced when course is offered.
984 Topics in Macroeconomics.
Topics and prerequisites announced when course is offered.
998 Individual Reading and Research
999 Independent Study
Workshops and Research Seminars
Forum at which visiting speakers, Penn faculty, or Penn graduate students
present research ideas.
719 Economic Theory Workshop
Related Courses: Economics 712.
729 Econometrics Workshop
Related Courses: Economics 721 and 722.
739 International Economics Workshop
Related Courses: Economics 730 and 731.
749 Monetary Economics/Macro Economics Workshop
Related Courses: Economics 740 and 741.
759/789 Applied Microeconomic Workshop
Related Courses: Economics 750 and 751; and 780 and 781.
769/799 Empirical Microeconomic Workshop
Related Courses: Economics 760, 792, 793.
Some Related Finance Courses
911 Financial Economics. Spring.
Individual investment decisions under certainty. Stochastic dominance.
Mean-variance portfolio theory. Introduction to the theory of capital
market equilibrium and asset valuation. Arbitrage pricing theory.
921 Empirical Research and Financial Economics. Spring.
Prerequisites: Finance 911, Economics 705 and 706 or equivalent (latter
may be concurrent). Introduction to empirical methods in finance. Probability
distributions of asset returns. Impacts of events on asset prices. Estimation
and testing of asset pricing models. Measurement problems in financial
data. Predictability of returns. Changes in risk and volatility.
922 Continuous-Time Financial Economics. Fall.
Prerequisites: Finance 911, Economics 701 Stochastic models of continuous
trading. Viability and state-price densities. Equivalent martingale measures.
Optimal consumption with complete markets under constraints. Asset pricing
and equilibrium models in continuous time.
923 Financial Economics under Imperfect Information. Fall.
Prerequisites: Finance 922 General equilibrium and rational expectations.
Foundations of the theory of information. Learning from prices in rational
expectations equilibrium models. Moral hazard, adverse selection, and
signaling. Bidding theories.
932 Corporation Finance. Spring.
Prerequisites: Finance 911, Finance 921, Finance 923 Financial decisions
of the firm, advanced theory and empirical investigations of dividends,
capital structure, mergers and takeovers.
***A complete listing of Finance Department Ph.D. courses can be found
at their web
site
This course information subject to change without notice. Contact the
University Registrar for additional information.
