College of Business and Economics

Selections

MA / PhD in Economics: photo of the globe and numbers.

Course Descriptions

(PR means prerequisite, a course that must be taken first. Roman number I means the course is taught in the fall semester, II spring semester, S summer. A * in front of the course number indicates that the course will not be offered in the near future).


Energy and Environmental Economics

783. Energy Economics. 3 hr. PR: Graduate standing and consent. Welfare analysis of supply interruptions and the foreign dependence question. Study of various energy resources in reference to policy alternatives under variant growth conditions and input-output models. Examination of coal industry and coal externalities.

784. Environmental Economics. 3 hr. PR: ECON 701 and ECON 783 or MER 345 and graduate standing or consent. Examination of the theoretical and empirical literature dealing with externalities (pollution), the relationships between pollution and social costs, the relationships between energy production and environmental quality, and the optimal strategies for pollution abatement.

Financial Economics

735. Portfolio Theory. 3 hr. PR: ECON 701. Issues concerning the choice of optimal portfolios. Topics include: decision making under risk; mean-variance portfolio choice; the utility specification and optimal portfolio choice; asset allocation over time.

736. Asset Pricing. 3 hr. PR: ECON 735 and ECON 702. Static and dynamic models of asset pricing. Focus on general factors as well as specific economic determinants of financial asset prices from a theoretical and empirical perspective.

739. Seminar in Financial Economics. 3 hr. PR: ECON 735 and ECON 736. Further topics in financial economics. Includes issues in corporate finance and the pricing of derivative assets.

International Economics

455. Economic Development. I or II. 3 hr. PR: ECON 201, 202. The problems, changes, and principal policy issues faced by nonindustrialized countries.

451. International Economics. I or II. 3 hr. PR: ECON 201, 202. Development of trade among nations; theories of trade; policies, physical factors, trends, and barriers to trade. Determination of exchange rates. Open economy macroeconomics.

751. International Trade. 3 hr. PR: ECON 701.Contemporary theories of international trade; analysis of current problems in world trade.

752. International Macroeconomics. 3 hr. PR: ECON 702.Current theories and policies concerning balance of payments, international capital movements, and foreign exchange, and their relation to the macro economy.

Monetary Economics

731. Monetary Economics 1. 3 hr. PR: ECON 702. Sources and determinants of supply of money; demand for money for transactions and speculative purposes; general equilibrium theory of money, interest, prices. and output; role of money in policy.

732. Monetary Economics 2. 3 hr. PR: ECON 702. Further topics in monetary economics.

Public Economics

441. Public Economics. I or II. 3 hr. PR: ECON 201, 202. Economic roles of the public sector. Particular attention to market failure, redistributing income, the financing of public sector activities, relationships between federal, state, and local governments, and public choice.

741. Public Economics 1. 3 hr. PR: ECON 701. Economic role of government in a mixed economy with regard to topics such as resource allocation and distribution of income; social choice mechanisms; fiscal federalism; and revenue.

742. Public Economics 2. 3 hr. PR: ECON 741. Continuation of public economics. Public Regulation and Control

445. Government and Business. I or II. 3 hr. PR: ECON 201, 202. Examination of market structure, conduct, and performance. Analysis of market regulation including antitrust laws and regulation of monopolies.

446.Transportation Economics. 3 hr. PR: ECON 111 or 202. Economic and institutional analysis of the domestic transportation system of the United States. Topics include role of transportation, carrier characteristics and services, transportation rates and costs, regulation of transportation.

*745. Industrial Organization. 3 hr. PR: ECON 701 and graduate standing or consent. Economic analysis of market structure, conduct, and performance; in-depth evaluation of markets and industries in the United States and the effect of government intervention on firm behavior.

*746. Public Regulation of Business. I or II. 3 hr. Economic analysis of regulation of specific industries such as public utilities.

Regional Economics

461. Regional Economics. I. 3 hr. PR: ECON 201, 202. Analysis of the regional economy's spatial dimension, emphasizing interregional capital and labor mobility, the role of cities, objectives and issues of regional policy, lagging regions and Appalachia, growth poles, and regional growth and income distribution.

462. Urban Economics. I or II. 3 hr. PR: ECON 201, 202. Analyzes growth, decline, and socioeconomic problems of cities. Topics include the development of cities, urban spatial structure and land-use patterns, poverty and discrimination, housing, urban transportation and congestion, local government structure, and urban fiscal problems.

761. Advanced Regional Economics. 3 hr. PR: ECON 701 and graduate standing or consent. Regional income and flow of funds estimation, regional cyclical behavior and multiplier analysis, industrial location and analysis, techniques of regional input-output measurement, impact of local government reorganization on regional public service and economic development.

762. Advanced Urban Economics. 3 hr. PR: ECON 701. Theory, policy, and empirical research regarding growth and decline of cities, urban spatial structure and land-use patterns, intrametropolitan employment location, urban transportation, housing, housing market discrimination, local government structure, fiscal problems, and urban redevelopment.

*763. Spatial Economics. 3 hr. PR: ECON 701 or consent. Spatial dimension incorporated into the study of economic activity; spatial competition, market area analysis, locational equilibrium analysis, and general spatial equilibrium.

*764. Seminar in Regional Economics. 3 hr.

Economic Theory

306. History of Economic Thought. I or II. 3 hr. PR: 201, 202. Economic ideas in perspective of historic development.

701. Advanced Micro Theory 1. 4 hr. PR: ECON 301 and 421 and departmental approval. Theory of production and allocation, utility theory, theory of the firm, pricing in perfect and imperfect markets, models of firm's operations.

711. Advanced Micro Theory 2. 4 hr. PR: ECON 701 General equilibrium analysis, distribution theory, welfare economics.

702. Advanced Macro Theory 1. 3 hr. PR: ECON 302 and 421 and departmental approval. Classical, Keynesian, and modern macroeconomic theories.

712. Advanced Macro Theory 2. 3 hr. PR: ECON 702. Models of economic growth and fluctuations, and other advanced topics in macroeconomic theory.

*706. History of Economic Doctrines and Analysis. 3 hr. PR: ECON 701 and graduate standing or consent. Writings of the major figures in the development of economic doctrines and analysis.

Quantitative Economics

425. Introductory Econometrics. II. 3 hr. PR: ECON 201, 202, and 225 or STAT 211. Analysis of economic models using basic econometric methods. Specification, computation, and interpretation of linear regression.

721. Mathematical Economics. 3 hr. PR: Departmental approval. Mathematical methods used in economics.

725. Econometrics 1. 3 hr. PR: ECON 721. Mathematical statistics, including probability, mathematical expectation, distributions, linear regression, ordinary least squares and simple extensions. Students will use a computer to analyze data.

726. Econometrics 2. 3 hr. PR: ECON 725. Econometric methods used by practicing economists. Includes simultaneous equations, asymptotic properties of estimators, and generalizations of and alternatives to least squares estimation. Also may include qualitative response, panel data, nonlinear, spatial, and time series models.

722. Advanced Mathematical Economics. 3 hr. PR: Consent. Mathematical properties of microeconomic models of general equilibrium and welfare, existence, uniqueness, and stability of equilibrium. Applications of Hamiltonian and maximum principles to growth models and economic control problems. Investigation of separability theorems.

727. Econometrics 3. 3 hr. PR: ECON 726. Completes the graduate econometrics sequence. Topics may include computational methods and time series, spatial, nonlinear, qualitative response, and panel data models.

791A. Dynamic Methods in Economics 1 hr. PR: Econ 721. Mathematical techniques and preliminaries for dynamic economic analysis.

Other Economics Courses

643. Economic Analysis of Public Policies. 3 hr. Application of economic analysis to questions of public policy. Consideration of problems of public goods and other market failures and usefulness of cost-benefit analysis to policy making. (Equiv. to POLS 331.)

595. Independent Reading in Economics. 3-6 hr. Supervised readings. For graduate students in special areas.

709. Workshop in Research Design and Methodology. 1-3 hr. PR: Completion of both theory comprehensive exams, or consent. Basic research approaches based on examples from the students' own work, papers presented at the departmental research seminar series, and the economic literature in general.

791. Seminar in Applied Economic Analysis. 3 hr. PR: 12 hr. of graduate-level economics.

795. Independent Study. 3-6 hrs. For graduate students working on a Master's Thesis or research paper.

797. Research. 1-15 hrs. For graduate students working on their Ph.D. dissertation.