Courses tagged with "Structural+engineering" (87)

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.

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.

This is a graduate course in labor economics. The course will focus on covering theory and evidence on inequality, wage structure, skill demands, employment, job loss, and early-life determinants of long-run outcomes. Particular areas of focus are: (1) wage determination, including the Roy model, equalizing wage differentials, and models of discrimination; (2) the roles played by supply, demand, institutions, technology and trade in the evolving distribution of income.

This course covers issues in the theory of consumption, investment and asset prices. We lay out the basic models first, and then examine the empirical facts that motivate extensions to these models.

Topics covered in a traditional college level introductory macroeconomics course. Circular Flow of Income and Expenditures. Parsing Gross Domestic Product. More on Final and Intermediate GDP Contributions. Investment and Consumption. Income and Expenditure Views of GDP. Components of GDP. Examples of Accounting for GDP. Real GDP and Nominal GDP. GDP Deflator. Example Calculating Real GDP with a Deflator. Introduction to Inflation. Actual CPI-U Basket of Goods. Inflation Data. Moderate Inflation in a Good Economy. Stagflation. Real and Nominal Return. Calculating Real Return in Last Year Dollars. Relation Between Nominal and Real Returns and Inflation. Deflation. Velocity of Money Rather than Quantity Driving Prices. Deflation Despite Increases in Money Supply. Deflationary Spiral. Hyperinflation. Unemployment Rate Primer. Phillips Curve. Interest as Rent for Money. Money Supply and Demand Impacting Interest Rates. The Business Cycle. Aggregate Demand. Shifts in Aggregate Demand. Long-Run Aggregate Supply. Short Run Aggregate Supply. Demand-Pull Inflation under Johnson. Real GDP driving Price. Cost Push Inflation. Monetary and Fiscal Policy. Tax Lever of Fiscal Policy. Breakdown of Gas Prices. Short-Run Oil Prices. Keynesian Economics. Risks of Keynesian Thinking. Overview of Fractional Reserve Banking. Weaknesses of Fractional Reserve Lending. Full Reserve Banking. Money Supply- M0 M1 and M2. Simple Fractional Reserve Accounting part 1. Simple Fractional Reserve Accounting (part 2). MPC and Multiplier. Mathy Version of MPC and Multiplier (optional). Consumption Function Basics. Generalized Linear Consumption Function. Consumption Function with Income Dependent Taxes. Keynesian Cross. Details on Shifting Aggregate Planned Expenditures. Keynesian Cross and the Multiplier. Investment and Real Interest Rates. Connecting the Keynesian Cross to the IS-Curve. Loanable Funds Interpretation of IS Curve. LM part of the IS-LM model. Government Spending and the IS-LM model. Balance of Payments- Current Account. Balance of Payments- Capital Account. Why Current and Capital Accounts Net Out. Accumulating Foreign Currency Reserves. Using Reserves to Stabilize Currency. Speculative Attack on a Currency. Financial Crisis in Thailand Caused by Speculative Attack. Math Mechanics of Thai Banking Crisis.

This course applies microeconomic theory to analysis of public policy. It builds from the microeconomic model of consumer behavior and extends to operation of single and multiple markets and analysis of why markets sometimes fail. We will study empirical examples to evaluate theory, focusing on the casual effects of policy interventions on economic outcomes. Topics include minimum wages and employment, food stamps and consumer welfare, economics of risk and safety regulation, the value of education, and gains from international trade.

This half-semester course provides an introduction to microeconomic theory designed to meet the needs of students in an 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. Students should be comfortable with multivariable calculus, linear algebra, and basic real analysis.

This course offers an introduction to noncooperative game theory. The course is intended both for graduate students who wish to develop a solid background in game theory in order to pursue research in the applied fields of economics and related disciplines, and for students wishing to specialize in economic theory. While the course is designed for graduate students in economics, it is open to all students who have taken and passed 14.121.

This course covers models of individual decision-making under certainty and uncertainty. Applications include risk sharing and financial markets; contracts and information economics; village economies and national development; models with money and credit; trade, spatial economics and differentiated commodities.

The topic of the class is information economics. The purpose is to give an introduction to some of the main subjects in this field: risk sharing, moral hazard, adverse selection (signaling, screening), mechanism design, decision making under uncertainty. These subjects (and others) will be treated in more depth in the advanced theory courses on Contract Theory.

This course is designed to introduce students to basic microeconomic theory at a relatively rapid pace without the use of complicated mathematics. The focus will be on fundamental economic principles that can be used by managers to think about business problems, including those that arise from coordinating workers and managers inside firms and from dealing with outside market forces and government policies.

Topics covered in a traditional college level introductory microeconomics course. Production Possibilities Frontier. Opportunity Cost. Increasing Opportunity Cost. Allocative Efficiency and Marginal Benefit. Economic Growth through Investment. Comparative Advantage Specialization and Gains from Trade. Comparative Advantage and Absolute Advantage. Law of Demand. Price of Related Products and Demand. Changes in Income, Population, or Preferences. Normal and Inferior Goods. Inferior Goods Clarification. Law of Supply. Factors Affecting Supply. Market Equilibrium. Changes in Market Equilibrium. Price Elasticity of Demand. More on Elasticity of Demand. Perfect Inelasticity and Perfect Elasticity of Demand. Constant Unit Elasticity. Total Revenue and Elasticity. More on Total Revenue and Elasticity. Cross Elasticity of Demand. Elasticity of Supply. Elasticity and Strange Percent Changes. Demand Curve as Marginal Benefit Curve. Consumer Surplus Introduction. Total Consumer Surplus as Area. Producer Surplus. Rent Control and Deadweight Loss. Minimum Wage and Price Floors. Taxation and Dead Weight Loss. Percentage Tax on Hamburgers. Taxes and Perfectly Inelastic Demand. Taxes and Perfectly Elastic Demand. Marginal Utility. Equalizing Marginal Utility per Dollar Spent. Deriving Demand Curve from Tweaking Marginal Utility per Dollar. Budget Line. Optimal Point on Budget Line. Types of Indifference Curves. Economic Profit vs Accounting Profit. Depreciation and Opportunity Cost of Capital. Fixed, Variable, and Marginal Cost.. Visualizing Average Costs and Marginal Costs as Slope. Marginal Cost and Average Total Cost. Marginal Revenue and Marginal Cost. Marginal Revenue Below Average Total Cost. Long Term Supply Curve and Economic Profit. Perfect Competition. Monopoly Basics. Review of Revenue and Cost Graphs for a Monopoly. Monopolist Optimizing Price (part 1)- Total Revenue.. Monopolist Optimizing Price (part 2)- Marginal Revenue. Monopolist Optimizing Price (part 3)- Dead Weight Loss.avi. Optional Calculus Proof to Show that MR has Twice Slope of Demand. Oligopolies and Monopolistic Competition. Monopolistic Competition and Economic Profit. Oligopolies, Duopolies, Collusion, and Cartels. Prisoners' Dilemma and Nash Equilibrium. More on Nash Equilibrium. Why Parties to Cartels Cheat. Game Theory of Cheating Firms. Negative Externalities. Taxes for Factoring in Negative Externalities. Positive Externalities. Tragedy of the Commons. First Degree Price Discrimination. A Firm's Marginal Product Revenue Curve. How Many People to Hire Given the MPR curve. Adding Demand Curves.

Non-bankers can learn to understand the mathematical models that have made the headlines so many times in recent years. A course for students of economics, business studies, mathematics, physics and computer science.

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.

This course focuses on recent developments in econometrics, especially structural estimation. The topics include nonseparable models, models of imperfect competition, auction models, duration models, and nonlinear panel data. Results are illustrated with economic applications.

This course presents micro-econometric models, including large sample theory for estimation and hypothesis testing, generalized method of moments (GMM), estimation of censored and truncated specifications, quantile regression, structural estimation, nonparametric and semiparametric estimation, treatment effects, panel data, bootstrapping, simulation methods, and Bayesian methods. The methods are illustrated with economic applications.

This course in organizational economics prepares doctoral students for further study in the field. The course introduces the classic papers and some recent research. The material is organized into the following modules: boundaries of the firm, employment in organizations, decision-making in organizations, and structures and processes in organizations. Each class session covers a few leading papers.

This course was joint-taught between faculty of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and Harvard University. The Harvard course is Economics 2670 Organizational Economics.

This course provides an overview of macroeconomic issues: the determination of output, employment, unemployment, interest rates, and inflation. Monetary and fiscal policies are discussed. Important policy debates such as, the sub-prime crisis, social security, the public debt, and international economic issues are critically explored. The course introduces basic models of macroeconomics and illustrates principles with the experience of the U.S. and foreign economies.

This introductory course teaches the fundamentals of microeconomics. Topics include consumer theory, producer theory, the behavior of firms, market equilibrium, monopoly, and the role of the government in the economy. 14.01 is a Humanities, Arts, and Social Sciences (HASS) elective and is offered both terms.

This course is a core subject in MIT's undergraduate Energy Studies Minor. This Institute-wide program complements the deep expertise obtained in any major with a broad understanding of the interlinked realms of science, technology, and social sciences as they relate to energy and associated environmental challenges.

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.

This course is a core subject in MIT's undergraduate Energy Studies Minor. This Institute-wide program complements the deep expertise obtained in any major with a broad understanding of the interlinked realms of science, technology, and social sciences as they relate to energy and associated environmental challenges.

Course Format

This course has been designed for independent study. It includes all of the materials you will need to understand the concepts covered in this subject. The materials in this course include:

• A complete set of Lecture Videos by Prof. Jon Gruber.
• Reading Assignments in your choice of two textbooks – one of which is a free online edition - as preparation for the lectures.
• Multiple-choice Quizzes to assess your understanding of the key concepts in each session.
• Problem Sets with solution keys to test your ability to apply to concepts covered in lecture, and Problem Solving Videos to provide step-by-step instruction through several problem set solutions.
• A collection of links For Further Study to provide supplemental online content.
• A full set of Exams, including review material and practice exams to help you prepare.