Courses tagged with "Information Theory" (219)

This half semester class will present an introduction to macroeconomic modeling, particularly economic growth. It will focus both on models of economic growth and their empirical applications, and try to shed light on the mechanics of economic growth, technological change and sources of income and growth differences across countries.

This course is a survey of world economic history, and it introduces economics students to the subject matter and methodology of economic history. It is designed to expand the range of empirical settings in students' research by drawing upon historical material and long-run data. Topics are chosen to show a wide variety of historical experience and illuminate the process of industrialization. The emphasis will be on questions related to labor markets and economic growth.

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.

This course is designed for students particularly concerned with the practical problems of operating in large formal organizations, either from an operational or a research perspective. It will focus, as the title suggests, upon different forms of economic organizations and institutions in advanced and developing industrial societies and the theories (and theoretical perspectives) which might help us to understand them.

This course uses theoretical models and empirical studies to help understand the economics behind various internet businesses. We will begin with a discussion of relevant topics from industrial organization (IO) including monopoly pricing, price discrimination, product differentiation, and barriers to entry. The main part of the course will be a discussion of a number of online businesses. In the context of those businesses, we will discuss extensions and applications of the ideas from the first section of the course.

This course integrates psychological insights into economic models of behavior. It discusses the limitations of standard economic models and surveys the ways in which psychological experiments have been used to learn about preferences, cognition, and behavior. Topics include: trust, vengeance, fairness, impatience, impulsivity, bounded rationality, learning, reinforcement, classical conditioning, loss-aversion, over-confidence, self-serving biases, cognitive dissonance, altruism, subjective well-being, and hedonic adaptation. Economic concepts such as equilibrium, rational choice, utility maximization, Bayesian beliefs, game theory, and behavior under uncertainty are discussed in light of these phenomena.

This class discusses the economic aspects of current issues in education, using both economic theory and econometric and institutional readings. Topics include discussion of basic human capital theory, the growing impact of education on earnings and earnings inequality, statistical issues in determining the true rate of return to education, the labor market for teachers, implications of the impact of computers on the demand for worker skills, the effectiveness of mid-career training for adult workers, the roles of school choice, charter schools, state standards and educational technology in improving K-12 education, and the issue of college financial aid.

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

As markets or production bases, China and India are becoming important and integral players in the global economy. Foreign direct investment (FDI), portfolio investments and outsourcing businesses have increased dramatically in these two economies. Despite the rising importance of these two economies on the world stage, our knowledge and analysis of these two countries in an integrated manner has remained poor. The two are often lumped together by business analysts as "emerging markets," despite the substantial differences in their political systems, reform policies and business organizations. Academics, in contrast, have tended to treat the two countries separately, preferring to specialize in issues and questions specific to one or the other country.

The purpose of this course is to analyze these two countries within a coherent analytical framework. Our learning model is inductive, and heavily based on class discussions and participation. The group projects should aim at integrating analysis, knowledge and understanding of these two countries. We will also experiment with other forms of group projects, such as creating and working on business plans and those projects that integrate research from field trips with more traditional research, such as library research. There is no prerequisite but 15.012 (Applied Macro- and International Economics) and 15.223 (Global Markets, National Policies and the Competitive Advantage of Firms) are highly recommended.

This course explores the theoretical and empirical perspectives on individual and industrial demand for energy, energy supply, energy markets, and public policies affecting energy markets. It discusses aspects of the oil, natural gas, electricity, and nuclear power sectors and examines energy tax, price regulation, deregulation, energy efficiency and policies for controlling emission.

15.431 Entrepreneurial Finance examines the elements of entrepreneurial finance, focusing on technology-based start-up ventures and the early stages of company development. The course addresses key questions which challenge all entrepreneurs: how much money can and should be raised; when should it be raised and from whom; what is a reasonable valuation of the company; and how should funding, employment contracts and exit decisions be structured. It aims to prepare students for these decisions, both as entrepreneurs and venture capitalists. In addition, the course includes an in-depth analysis of the structure of the private equity industry.

This course clarifies key marketing concepts, methods, and strategic issues relevant for start-up and early-stage entrepreneurs. At this course, there are two major questions:

1. Marketing Question: What and how am I selling to whom?
2. New Venture Question: How do I best leverage my limited marketing recourses?

Specifically, this course is designed to give students a broad and deep understanding of such topics as:

1. What are major strategic constraints and issues confronted by entrepreneurs today?
2. How can one identify and evaluate marketing opportunities?
3. How do entrepreneurs achieve competitive advantages given limited marketing resources?
4. What major marketing/sales tools are most useful in an entrepreneurial setting?

Because there is no universal marketing solution applicable to all entrepreneurial ventures, this course is designed to help students develop a flexible way of thinking about marketing problems in general.

This course explores the theory behind and evidence on regulatory, tax, and other government responses to problems of market failure. Special emphasis is given to developing and implementing tools to evaluate environmental policies. Other topics include cost-benefit analysis, measurement of the benefits of non-market goods and costs of regulations, and the evaluation of the impact of regulations in areas such as financial markets, workplace health and safety, consumer product safety, and other contexts.

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.

This course offers an introduction to ethics in business, with a focus on business management. Students explore theoretical concepts in business ethics, and cases representing the challenges they will likely face as managers. There is opportunity to work with guest faculty as well as business and other professional practitioners. Individual class sessions take the form of moderated discussion, with occasional short lectures from the instructor.

The objective of this course is to learn the financial tools needed to make good business decisions. The course presents the basic insights of corporate finance theory, but emphasizes the application of theory to real business decisions. Each session involves class discussion, some centered on lectures and others around business cases.

Our goal is to help you develop a framework for understanding financial, managerial, and tax reports. The course goal is divided into five subordinate challenges that can help you organize the way you learn accounting:

1. The record keeping and reporting challenge
2. The computation challenge
3. The judgment challenge
4. The usage challenge
5. The search challenge

The course adopts a decision-maker perspective of accounting by emphasizing the relation between accounting data and the underlying economic events generating them. Restricted to first-year Sloan MBA students.

Acknowledgements

Acknowledgment is hereby given to Professor G. Peter Wilson for his authorship of the following content in this course:

• The Five Challenges (see Syllabus and Lecture 1)
• "What Do Intel and Accountants Have in Common?" (see Lecture 1)
• A Conceptual Framework for Financial Accounting (see Lecture 1)