These are the regularly offered Ph.D. courses offered through the University of Pennsylvania Economics Graduate program. This course information is subject to change without notice.
For current course offerings, refer to the menu choices to the left.
***A complete listing of Finance Department Ph.D. courses can be found at their website.
Prerequisite(s): Equivalent of Econ 003; meeting the Department's minimal mathematical requirements; or permission of instructor.
Basic tools of microeconomic theory: consumer choice, firm behavior, partial and general equilibrium theory.
Prerequisite: Econ 681
A graduate level introduction to decision making under uncertainty, applied game theory, and information economics.
Prerequisite: Econ 897 (Summer Math Camp) or equivalent.
Nonlinear programming, theory of the consumer and producer, general equilibrium.
Prerequisite: Econ 897 (Summer Math Camp) or equivalent; Econ 701 and 703.
Dynamic programming, search theory, growth theory, asset pricing, business cycles.
Prerequisites: Econ 897 (Summer Math Camp) or equivalent.
Game theory, decision making under uncertainty, information economics.
Prerequisites: Meeting the Department's minimal mathematical requirements; ECON 701, 703, and 897 Summer Math Program.
Equilibrium notions in the growth model. Economies with distortions. Incomplete markets. Overlapping generations.
Prerequisite: Econ 897 (Summer Math Camp) or equivalent.
Violations of classical linear regression assumptions, nonlinear regression models (including logit, probit, etc.), diagnostic testing, distributed lag models, panel data models, identification, linear simultaneous-equations model.
Prerequisites: Meeting the department's minimal mathematical requirements; Econ 705 and 897 Summer Math Program.
Analysis in time and frequency domains, state space representations, Kalman filtering, conditional heteroskedasticity, nonlinear and non-parametric methods for time series, integration, co-integration, numerical and simulation techniques.
Prerequisites: Meeting the department's minimal mathematical requirements or equivalents.
This course studies the economics of adverse selection and moral hazard in strategic settings. The primary focus is on the agency relationship and the structure of agency contracts. Other settings include auctions, bilateral trading, and the internal organization of the firm.
Topics and prerequisites announced each year.
Prerequisites: Econ 701 and 703
A rigorous introduction to the concepts, tools, and techniques of the theory of games, with emphasis on those parts of the theory that are of particular importance in economics. Topics include games in normal and extensive form, Nash equilibrium, games of incomplete information and Bayesian equilibrium, signaling games, and repeated games.
Prerequisites: ECON 702 and 704.
Computation of Equilibria. Calibration of models. Heterogeneous agents, macroeconomic models.
Prerequisites: The course relies heavily on material covered in Microeconomic Theory I (Econ 701).
This course covers various topics in equilibrium theory (broadly conceived as the analysis of any model in which the collective outcome of individual actions in an economic -- or, even more generally, social setting is described by a system of equations). In recent years, the focus has been on the theory of equilibrium in a competitive setting when financial markets are "imperfect," for example, when there are an incomplete set of financial markets, or when households' transactions on financial markets are restricted by various conventions or institutions.
Related Courses: Econ 730 and 731.
Prerequisites: Econ 705 and 706.
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.
Prerequisites: Econ 705 and 706.
Consistency and asymptotic normality for m-estimator and for generalized moment estimators. Asymptotics for integrated and cointegrated time-series. Inference in presence of nuisance parameters identified only under the alternative: consistent moment tests, testing for threshold effects, testing for structural breaks. Estimation of stochastic differential equations from discrete observations: simulated method of moments, indirect inference. Discrete time GARCH models and their continuous limits.
Related Courses: Econ 721 and 722.
Prerequisites: Econ 701 and 702.
Pure theory of international trade, commercial policy, and trade.
Prerequisites: Econ 701 and 702.
Balance of payments, international captial movements, and foreign exchange examined against a background of current theories and policies.
Related Courses: Econ 730 and 731.
Prerequisites: Econ 703, 704, 705, and 706, or permission of instructor.
The role of money as a medium of exchange and as an asset. Models of the demand for money.
Prerequisites: Econ 701 and 702.
Theories of economics growth and their quantitative implications
Related Courses: Econ 740 and 741.
Prerequisites: Econ 701 and 703.
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.
Prerequisites: Econ 701 and 703.
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, and the open economy. Normative theories of taxation: Optimal commodity and income taxation. The political economy of income taxation.
Prerequisite: Econ 702.
A review of alternative theories of growth and business cycles and their relevance for recent history of selected industrialized countries. Fiscal and monetary policy in a dynamic setting and their application to current policy issues.
Related courses: ECON 750 and 751
Prerequisites: Econ 701 and 705, or permission of instructor.
Analysis of selected topics in economic development related to household/firm (farm) behavior, including determinants of and the impact of human resources, contractual arrangements in land, labor and credit markets, investment and savings. Emphasis on tractable modeling that leads to integrated analysis given available data.
Related courses: ECON 760, 761, 791
Forum at which visiting speakers, Penn faculty, and graduate students present research ideas.
Prerequisite: Econ 701.
Development of microeconomic models to explain the structure and performance of markets. Among other topics: the conditions under which monopoly power can be exercised, the relationship between profit rates and concentration or size, the persistence of profits over time, industry turnover and interindustry comparisons.
The goal of the course is to explore links between theory and data in order to identify and test implications of economic models. Reduced form and structural approaches will be used to study a variety of topics that include: Estimation of multiproduct cost functions; detection of collusion, multimarket contact, and network externalities; asymmetric information: auctions and nonlinear pricing; price competition and product differentiation; and complementarities: innovation and organizational design.
Prerequisites: Econ 701. The course will cover topics in oligopolistic competition, product Selection and the operation of markets under imperfect information and related subjects.
Related Courses: Econ 750 and 751; and 780 and 781.
Prerequisite: Econ 701, 703, 705, and 706.
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: Econ 792, or permission of instructor.
A continuation of Econ 792.
Related Courses: Econ 760, 792, 793. Some Related Finance Courses
Functions, differentials and integral calculus, inverse and implicit functions, extremum value and constrained maximization, vector-valued functions, economic applications.
Full details at Summer Math Camp.
Workshops and Research Seminars Forum at which visiting speakers, Penn faculty, or Penn graduate students present research ideas.