MIT OpenCourseWare: New Courses in Economics

14.73 The Challenge of World Poverty (MIT)

Duflo, Esther — 2013-02-11T08:12:25+05:00

This is a course for those who are interested in the challenge posed by massive and persistent world poverty, and are hopeful that economists might have something useful to say about this challenge. The questions we will take up include: Is extreme poverty a thing of the past? What is economic life like when living under a dollar per day? Why do some countries grow fast and others fall further behind? Does growth help the poor? Are famines unavoidable? How can we end child labor—or should we? How do we make schools work for poor citizens? How do we deal with the disease burden? Is micro finance invaluable or overrated? Without property rights, is life destined to be "nasty, brutish and short"? Has globalization been good to the poor? Should we leave economic development to the market? Should we leave economic development to non-governmental organizations (NGOs)? Does foreign aid help or hinder? Where is the best place to intervene?

14.33 Economics Research and Communication (MIT)

Ellison, Sara — 2012-12-17T09:30:52+05:00

This course will guide students through the process of forming economic hypotheses, gathering the appropriate data, analyzing them, and effectively communicating their results.

14.581 International Economics I (MIT)

Donaldson, Dave — 2012-03-12T13:00:14+05:00

This course covers, with a focus on both theory and empirics, advanced topics in international trade (as well as inter-regional trade and economic geography). It includes the study of positive issues, such as: Why do countries trade? What goods do countries trade? What are the implications of openness for the location of production, industries, occupations, and innovative activity? And, what impedes trade and why do some countries deliberately erect policy impediments to trade? The course also concerns normative issues, such as: Is trade openness beneficial to a representative agent? And, Are there winners and losers from trade and if so, can we identify them? Throughout, these issues are approached in neoclassical settings as well as those with market failures, at the industry-level as well as the firm-level, and in the presence of both mobile and immobile factors (e.g., foreign direct investment (FDI), offshoring of tasks, multinational firms and immigration).

14.01SC Principles of Microeconomics (MIT)

Gruber, Jonathan — 2012-02-10T13:49:24+05:00

14.01 Principles of Microeconomics is an introductory undergraduate course that teaches the fundamentals of microeconomics. This course introduces microeconomic concepts and analysis, supply and demand analysis, theories of the firm and individual behavior, competition and monopoly, and welfare economics. Students will also be introduced to the use of microeconomic applications to address problems in current economic policy throughout the semester.

14.454 Economic Crises (MIT)

Caballero, Ricardo — 2011-12-13T16:32:37+05:00

14.454 is an introduction to current macroeconomic concerns with particular emphasis on medium-run economic fluctuations, economic crises, and the role of asset markets. Topics include the explanation of high chronic unemployment in some nations, the source of modern liquidity crises, the origin and end of speculative bubbles, and the factors that lead to substantial periods of economic stagnation.

14.42 Environmental Policy and Economics (MIT)

Allcott, Hunt — 2011-10-20T15:18:23+05:00

This course explores the proper role of government in the regulation of the environment. It will help students develop the tools to estimate the costs and benefits of environmental regulations. These tools will be used to evaluate a series of current policy questions, including: Should air and water pollution regulations be tightened or loosened? What are the costs of climate change in the U.S. and abroad? Is there a "Race to the Bottom" in environmental regulation? What is "sustainable development"? How do environmental problems differ in developing countries? Are we running out of oil and other natural resources? Should we be more energy efficient? To gain real world experience, the course is scheduled to include a visit to the MIT cogeneration plant. We will also do an in-class simulation of an air pollution emissions market.

14.661 Labor Economics I (MIT)

Angrist, Joshua — 2011-06-10T10:59:06+05:00

The aim of this course is to acquaint students with traditional topics in labor economics and to encourage the development of independent research interests. We will cover a systematic development of the theory of labor supply, labor demand, and human capital. Topics include wage and employment determination, turnover, search, immigration, unemployment, equalizing differences, and institutions in the labor market. There will be particular emphasis on the interaction between theoretical and empirical modeling.

14.41 Public Finance and Public Policy (MIT)

Gruber, Jonathan — 2011-05-31T14:09:43+05:00

Explores the role of government in the economy, applying tools of basic microeconomics to answer important policy questions such as government response to global warming, school choice by K-12 students, Social Security versus private retirement savings accounts, government versus private health insurance, setting income tax rates for individuals and corporations.

14.03 Microeconomic Theory and Public Policy (MIT)

Autor, David — 2011-05-18T09:45:54+05:00

This class presents microeconomic theory and applications of consumer and producer behavior and welfare analysis at an intermediate level. In addition to standard competitive models, we study deviations due to externalities, asymmetric information, and imperfect rationality. We apply this material to policy debates including minimum wage regulations, food stamp provision, trade protection, educational credentials, health insurance markets, and real estate markets.

14.126 Game Theory (MIT)

Manea, Mihai — 2010-12-13T17:30:45+05:00

This course is a rigorous investigation of the evolutionary and epistemic foundations of solution concepts, such as rationalizability and Nash equilibrium. It covers classical topics, such as repeated games, bargaining, and supermodular games as well as new topics such as global games, heterogeneous priors, psychological games, and games without expected utility maximization. Applications are provided when available.

14.123 Microeconomic Theory III (MIT)

Yildiz, Muhamet — 2010-12-08T14:05:46+05:00

This is a half-semester course which covers the topics in Microeconomic Theory that everybody with a Ph.D. from MIT Economics Department should know but that have not yet been covered in the Micro sequence. Hence, it covers several unrelated topics. The topics come from three general areas: Decision Theory, Game Theory, and Behaviorla Economics. I will try my best to put them in a coherent narrative, but there will be inherent jumps from topic to topic.

14.461 Advanced Macroeconomics I (MIT)

Lorenzoni, Guido — 2010-06-08T13:29:42+05:00

This course covers three sets of topics. The first part will cover business cycle models with imperfect information. We will ask questions such as: What shocks drive business cycles? What is the relative role of shocks to fundamentals and shocks affecting expectations about (current and future) economic developments? How do informational frictions affect the shape of the responses to various shocks? The second part will cover models of investment with credit constraints. We will ask questions such as: What is the transmission mechanism from shocks to the financial sector to the real economy? What determines optimal decisions about capitalization at the individual and at the social level? The third part will cover search models of decentralized trade applied both to labor markets and to financial markets. In particular, the models will have informational imperfections.

14.02 Principles of Macroeconomics (MIT)

Guerrieri, Veronica — 2010-06-08T10:36:23+05:00

This course is designed to introduce classic macroeconomic issues such as growth, inflation, unemployment, interest rates, exchange rates, technological progress, and budget deficits. The course will provide a unified framework to address these issues and to study the impact of different policies, such as monetary and fiscal policies, on the aggregate behavior of individuals. These analytical tools will be used to understand the recent experience of the United States and other countries and to address how current policy initiatives affect their macroeconomic performance.

14.15J Networks (MIT)

Acemoglu, Daron — 2010-06-04T15:14:15+05:00

Networks are ubiquitous in our modern society. The World Wide Web that links us to and enables information flows with the rest of the world is the most visible example. It is, however, only one of many networks within which we are situated. Our social life is organized around networks of friends and colleagues. These networks determine our information, influence our opinions, and shape our political attitudes. They also link us, often through important but weak ties, to everybody else in the United States and in the world. Economic and financial markets also look much more like networks than anonymous marketplaces. Firms interact with the same suppliers and customers and use Web-like supply chains. Financial linkages, both among banks and between consumers, companies and banks, also form a network over which funds flow and risks are shared. Systemic risk in financial markets often results from the counterparty risks created within this financial network. Food chains, interacting biological systems and the spread and containment of epidemics are some of the other natural and social phenomena that exhibit a marked networked structure. This course will introduce the tools for the study of networks. It will show how certain common principles permeate the functioning of these diverse networks and how the same issues related to robustness, fragility, and interlinkages arise in several different types of networks.

14.451 Dynamic Optimization Methods with Applications (MIT)

Lorenzoni, Guido — 2010-06-04T15:11:27+05:00

This course focuses on dynamic optimization methods, both in discrete and in continuous time. We approach these problems from a dynamic programming and optimal control perspective. We also study the dynamic systems that come from the solutions to these problems. The course will illustrate how these techniques are useful in various applications, drawing on many economic examples. However, the focus will remain on gaining a general command of the tools so that they can be applied later in other classes.

14.121 Microeconomic Theory I (MIT)

Pathak, Parag — 2010-05-04T17:21:48+05:00

This half-semester course provides an introduction to microeconomic theory designed to meet the needs of students in the economics Ph.D. program. Some parts of the course are designed to teach material that all graduate students should know. Others are used to introduce methodologies. Topics include consumer and producer theory, markets and competition, general equilibrium, and tools of comparative statics and their application to price theory. Some topics of recent interest may also be covered.

14.147 Topics in Game Theory (MIT)

Pathak, Parag — 2010-05-04T17:21:55+05:00

This course is an advanced topics course on market and mechanism design. We will study existing or new market institutions, understand their properties, and think about whether they can be re-engineered or improved. Topics discussed include mechanism design, auction theory, one-sided matching in house allocation, two-sided matching, stochastic matching mechanisms, student assignment, and school choice.

14.452 Economic Growth (MIT)

Acemoglu, Daron — 2010-04-06T13:42:45+05:00

This half semester class presents an introduction to macroeconomic modeling, focusing on the theory of economic growth and some of its applications. It will introduce a number of models of non-stochastic and stochastic macroeconomic equilibrium. It will use these models to shed light both on the process of economic growth at the world level and on sources of income and growth differences across countries.

14.71 Economic History of Financial Crises (MIT)

Temin, Peter — 2010-03-08T19:08:01+05:00

This course gives a historical perspective on financial panics. Topics include the growth of the industrial world, the Great Depression and surrounding events, and more recent topics such as the first oil crisis, Japanese stagnation, and conditions following the financial crisis of 2008.

14.64 Labor Economics and Public Policy (MIT)

Angrist, Joshua — 2010-02-16T15:27:15+05:00

This course is an introduction to labor economics with an emphasis on applied microeconomic theory and empirical analysis. We are especially interested in the link between research and public policy. Topics to be covered include: labor supply and demand, taxes and transfers, minimum wages, immigration, human capital, education production, inequality, discrimination, unions and strikes, and unemployment.