Elective courses are used to develop a student's subject-matter specialization, and equip students with tools and frameworks for analyzing problems in their candidate field. Course descriptions and numbers may change and not all courses are offered every semester. Students will need to work with their advisor and the PhD Coordinator to ensure that they are completing an approved course of study.
Course descriptions represent courses expected to be offered during the 2007-2008 academic year. While the School endeavors to offer as many of the courses as possible, not all courses are offered every semester. It is important to check with individual departments prior to scheduling classes to determine the availability of courses for any given semester.
The Wharton School and the University of Pennsylvania reserve the right to make changes affecting policies, fees, curricula, or any other matters announced here.
This list includes the graduate courses offered by Wharton departments that are possible electives for the five field areas within the Applied Economics program. Other electives may be taken with approval from the student’s advisor and the doctoral coordinator.
Business & Public Policy
BPUB 900 Research Seminar ("Applied Economics Student Research Seminar")
This course is designed to teach the craft of applied economic research to students of any Wharton doctoral program. To this end we will meet weekly, Thursdays at noon, with one of the following items on the agenda: 1) a student research presentation (for example, all BPUB students are required to give such presentations at least annually); 2) a post mortem discussion of the previous day's applied economics seminar; or 3) a faculty guest speaker introducing students to a research approach or a set of researchable topics. The course provides a venue for moving research forward, including both papers assigned for other classes and research leading toward a dissertation. This course aims to bring students a hands-on understanding of the course as appropriate for all doctoral students with applied microeconomic interests who have completed at least one year of their doctoral program. No prerequisites.BPUB 911 Empirical Public Policy
This course examines empirical research methods on topics related to public policy, with the goal of preparing students to undertake their own empirical research. This is not a course in statistical or econometric theory, but rather a workshop in empirical research design and methods for applied research. Each class session will review one or more important papers in the literature, on topics including (but not limited to) public economics, labor economics, law and economics, industrial organization, and related areas. These papers are chosen to study two major areas of empirical research: (1) problems and methods for measuring causal relationships in observational data, including statistical endogeneity, instrumental variable methods, research designs using panel data, and selection problems; and (2) structural (behavioral) statistical models. Students are required to prepare a research proposal or empirical research paper that is related to the student's (actual or intended) dissertation. No prerequisites.BPUB 951 Political Economy and Public Finance
This course discusses what should be the role of government in the economy and analyzes why and in what ways the behavior of governments in a representative democracy may diverge from this ideal role. The first part of the course reviews the various criteria such as Pareto efficiency and fairness, which have been put forward as desirable social objectives. It then explores the ability of the market mechanism to achieve these objectives and the potential role of government in correcting market failures. The second part of the course surveys alternative models of political competition and uses these models to assess the normative performance of representative democracy. Alleged government failures such as those due to limited time horizons, rent seeking and bureaucracy, are analyzed. The role of constitutional reforms in improving government performance is also discussed.BPUB 960 Cost Benefit Analysis
The principal tool for project and policy evaluation in the public sector. For government, whose "products" are rarely sold, the valuation of costs and benefits by means alternative to market prices is necessary. It is the counterpart to cost accounting in private firms and provides guidance for avoiding wasteful projects and undertaking those that are worthwhile. In addition, given government regulations, cost benefit evaluations are critical for many private sector activities. Real estate developers, manufacturing firms, employers of all types are required to provide evaluations of environmental impacts and of urban impacts for their proposed projects. They too must engage in cost benefit analysis, in the valuation of social benefits and costs. Government analysts, consultants, and private firms regularly carry out cost benefit analyses for major investments — bridges, roads, transit systems, convention centers, sports stadia, dams — as well as for regulatory activities — OSHA workplace safety regulations and the Clean Air Act are two important examples. PhD students will write a paper on a theoretical or applied issue in cost-benefit analysis in lieu of the final examination. Prerequisites: Microeconomics.BPUB 961 Risk Analysis and Environmental Management
This course is designed to introduce students to the role of risk assessment, risk perception and risk management in dealing with uncertain health, safety and environmental risks including the threat of terrorism. It explores the role of decision analysis as well as the use of scenarios for dealing with these problems. The course will evaluate the role of policy tools such as risk communication, economic incentives, insurance, regulation and private-public partnerships in developing strategies for managing these risks. A project will enable students to apply the concepts discussed in the course to a concrete problem. No prerequisites.BPUB 962 Applied Economics Seminar
The goal of this course is to help doctoral students develop critical thinking skills through both seminar participation and writing of referee reports. To this end, students will attend the Wharton Applied Economics Seminar each Wednesday at noon; prepare two written referee reports on WAE papers per semester, due before the seminar is presented; after attending the seminar — and the ensuing discussion of the paper—students will prepare follow-up evaluations of their referee report reports, due one week after the seminar. We will meet outside the seminar three times per semester (most likely during the Thursday 12-1:30 time slot, joint with BPUB 900)with Joel Waldfogel and staff, for discussion of the papers.BPUB 987 Regulatory Policy
This course will examine the economics of microeconomic government interventions in the marketplace and closely-related topics in industrial organization. Some of the economic topics that will be discussed include contracting, standards, and networks with application to regulation, deregulation, and privatization, strategic alliances with application to antitrust policy, and research and development with application to intellectual property policy. Most of the reading will consist of scholarly papers.
Insurance & Risk Management
INSR 932 Empirical Modeling for Risk and Insurance
This doctoral course will provide tools and methods to test the models and measure the parameters of interest in the microeconomics of decision-making under uncertainty; provides an understanding of the settings in which these concepts operate; and evaluates conditions under which programs designed to manage risk can have unanticipated or undesirable consequences. Students will have two main goals: 1) To develop cutting-edge tools and methods to estimate or measure key parameters and phenomena central to the study of insurance, risk, and risk management; 2) To develop an understanding of the design, structure, and impact of plans and policies designed to manage risk. No prerequisites.INSR 934 Economics of Risk and Information
This course deals with the economic theory of supply, demand, and equilibrium in insurance markets. The course will review decision models under conditions of risk, use these to address problems of optimal insurance, moral hazard and adverse selection, classification, contract enforcement and fraud. The course also looks at instability in insurance markets. No prerequisites.Economics
ECON 721 Econometrics III: Advanced Techniques of Cross-Section Econometrics
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. Prerequisite(s): ECON 705 and 706.ECON 750 Public Economics
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. Prerequisite(s): ECON 701 and 703.ECON 751 Public Economics II
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, the open economy. Prerequisite(s): ECON 701 and 703.ECON 792 Economics of Labor I
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. Prerequisite(s): ECON 701, 703, 705, and 706.Finance
FNCE 912 Financial Institutions
This course provides students with an overview of the basic contributions in the modern theory of corporate finance and financial institutions. The course is methodology oriented in that students are required to master necessary technical tools for each topic. The topics covered may include capital structure, distribution policy, financial intermediation, incomplete financial contracting, initial and seasoned public offerings, market for corporate control, product market corporate finance interactions, corporate reorganization and bankruptcy, financing in imperfect markets, security design under adverse selection and moral hazard, and some selected topics. Prerequisite(s): ECON 898, STAT 510 or FNCE 911.FNCE 921 Introduction to Empirical Methods in Finance
This course is an introduction to empirical methods commonly employed in finance. It provides the background for FNCE 934, Empirical Research in Finance. The course is organized around empirical papers with an emphasis on econometric methods. A heavy reliance will be placed on analysis of financial data. (B) Prerequisite(s): FNCE 911 (can be taken concurrently), STAT 510 and 511 or equivalent.FNCE 922 Continuous-Time Financial Economics
(Graduate level knowledge of analysis and statistics is highly recommended but not required). This course covers some advanced material on the theory of financial markets developed over the last two decades. The emphasis is on dynamic asset pricing and consumption choices in a continuous time setting. The articles discussed include many classical papers in the field as well as some of the most recent developments. The lectures will emphasize the concepts and technical tools needed to understand the articles. Prerequisite(s): FNCE 911, ECON 701, ECON 703.FNCE 924 Intertemporal Macroeconomics and Finance
This is a doctoral level course on macroeconomics, with special emphasis on intertemporal choice under uncertainty and topics related to finance. Topics include: optimal consumption and saving, the stochastic growth model, q-theory of investment, (incomplete) risk sharing and asset pricing. The course will cover and apply techniques, including dynamic programming, to solve dynamic optimization problems under uncertainty. Numerical solution methods are also discussed. Prerequisite(s): FNCE 911.FNCE 932 Corporate Finance
Advanced theory and empirical investigations: financial decisions of the firm, dividends, capital structure, mergers and takeovers. Prerequisite(s): FNCE 911, FNCE 921, or permission of instructor.FNCE 934 Empirical Research in Finance
Rigorous treatment of current empirical research in finance. Applications of multivariate and nonlinear methods. Intertemporal and multifactor pricing models. Conditional distributions. Temporal dependence in asset returns. Prerequisite(s): FNCE 911 and FNCE 921.FNCE 937 Applied Quantitative Methods in Finance
Finance 937 uses numerical tools to address a variety of issues in finance. The course has two main objectives. First, it seeks to provide the students with useful quantitative tools to understand and produce frontier research in finance. Second, it applies these tools to advanced topics in both corporate finance and asset pricing. A special emphasis is placed on new and recent research. Prerequisite(s): FNCE 911.Real Estate
REAL 945 Urban Real Estate Economics
Urban Real Estate Economics use microeconomic theory to analyze the determinants of metropolitan real estate values and the demand and supply of real estate. The course analyzes location decisions for households and firms, land utilization, urban growth, and the impact of local and federal government policies on urban development and real estate values. A market analysis project, using actual portfolio data, is required along with a midterm and second exam. Prerequisites: MGMT 621, Managerial Economics.Statistics
STAT 530 (MATH546) Probability
Measure theory and foundations of Probability theory. Zero-one Laws. Probability inequalities. Weak and strong laws of large numbers. Central limit theorems and the use of characteristic functions. Rates of convergence. Introduction to Martingales and random walk. Prerequisite(s): STAT 430 or 510 or equivalent.