Develops facility with concepts, language, and analytical tools of economics. Covers microeconomics, macroeconomics, and international trade and payments. Emphasizes integration of theory, data, and judgment in the analysis of corporate decisions and public policy, and in the assessment of changing US and international business environments. Restricted to Sloan Fellows. The fact of scarcity forces individuals, firms, and societies to choose among alternative uses -- or allocations -- of its limited resources. Accordingly, the first part of this summer course seeks to understand how economists model the choice process of individual consumers and firms, and how markets work to coordinate these choices. It also examines how well markets perform this function using the economist's criterion of market efficiency. Overall, this course focuses on microeconomics, with some topics from macroeconomics and international trade. It emphasizes the integration of theory, data, and judgment in the analysis of corporate decisions and public policy, and in the assessment of changing U.S. and international business environments.

Surveys research which incorporates psychological evidence into economics. Prospect theory. Biases in probabilistic judgment. Self-control and mental accounting with implications for consumption and savings. Fairness, altruism, and public goods contributions. Financial market anomalies and theories. Impact of markets, learning, and incentives. Some evidence on memory, attention, categorization, and the thinking process.

Examines political institutions from a rational choice perspective. The now burgeoning rational choice literature on legislatures, bureaucracies, courts, and elections constitutes the chief focus. Some focus on institutions from a comparative and/or international perspective. Graduate students are expected to pursue the subject in greater depth through reading and individual research. Advanced undergrads may take subject with faculty approval. This is an applied theory course covering topics in the political economy of democratic countries. This course examines political institutions from a rational choice perspective. The now burgeoning rational choice literature on legislatures, bureaucracies, courts, and elections constitutes the chief focus. Some focus will be placed on institutions from a comparative and/or international perspective.

" This is an applied theory course covering topics in the political economy of democratic countries. This course examines political institutions from a rational choice perspective. The now burgeoning rational choice literature on legislatures, bureaucracies, courts, and elections constitutes the chief focus. Some focus will be placed on institutions from a comparative and/or international perspective."

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.

Examines government regulation of prices, entry, and product quality from a normative and positive perspective. Theoretical analyses of regulatory mechanisms and empirical analyses of regulatory behavior and performance are included. Regulatory reform, industry restructuring, and deregulation in industries such as telecommunications, electric power, airlines, and pharmaceuticals in the US and abroad are covered.

General equilibrium, capital theory, incomplete markets, externalities, public goods.The central topic of this course is the theory of general equilibrium and its applications and extensions.

Public Finance rests at the intersection of two disciplines: Public Economics and Public Choice. Public Economics deals with issues of social optimality: how much of a good (or bad) does a society desire (or tolerate), and how do we incentivize producers and consumers to attain that amount? Public economics concerns itself with externalities, which are costs that are borne by persons not involved in a market transaction. There are both positive and negative externalities; public economists want to know how we get more of the good and less of the bad. Public choice is the field of economics that looks into the behavior of voters, politicians, and bureaucrats and studies how they choose given different policy institutions. Upon completion of this course, students will be able to: Define public finance terms such as 'public good,' 'free-rider,' 'median voter theorem,' 'externality,' 'pigouvian taxes,' and 'Lindahl tax.' Where appropriate, students will be able to include a graphical representation of these concepts in their definition of these terms; Give examples of different types of taxation; Identify the costs to society related to the imposition of a tax; Understand some simple economic models related to public finance, including the Consumer and Producer Surplus models and the Keynesian aggregate demand model; Graphically describe the effects of taxation on labor supply decisions, at both the individual (micro) and national (macro) levels; Explain the political economy aspects of public finance, particularly as they relate to rent seeking and lobbying, as well as the strategies that can be taken to combat rent-seeking behaviors, as well as other more general government failures; Describe the US taxation and budgeting system and list the most important areas of spending; Discuss current controversies related to taxation and government spending. (Economics 305)