Economics (ECO)

May be taken independently of ECO 182. The course begins with a review of fundamental economic principles and easures used to evaluate the economy; e.g., gross domestic product, inflation rate, unemployment measures and federal deficits. How the economy functions is then examined, followed by discovery of what can cause economic difficulties. Last is an exploration of policies used to improve the functioning of the economy.

May be taken independently of ECO 181. Scarcity of resources is everywhere. There is only so much time in a day, or only so much land, for example. Scarcity forces hard hoices upon each of us. Economics studies the consequences of scarcity and tries to understand how to extract as much value as possible from the available resources. The markets that surround us evolved because of scarcity, as has skill specialization. How has it happened? How should markets work to provide value from scarce resources? Do markets need to be regulated to improve their functioning? These are fundamental questions addressed in this course.

The one credit UB Seminar is focused on a big idea or challenging issue to engage students with questions of significance in a field of study and, ultimately, to connect their studies with issues of consequence in the wider world. Essential to the UB Curriculum, the Seminar helps transition to UB through an early connection to UB faculty and the undergraduate experience at a comprehensive, research university. This course is equivalent to any 198 offered in any subject. This course is a controlled enrollment (impacted) course. Students who have previously attempted the course and received a grade of F or R may not be able to repeat the course during the fall or spring semester.

The three credit UB Seminar is focused on a big idea or challenging issue to engage students with questions of significance in a field of study and, ultimately, to connect their studies with issues of consequence in the wider world. Essential to the UB Curriculum, the Seminar helps students with common learning outcomes focused on fundamental expectations for critical thinking, ethical reasoning, and oral communication, and learning at a university, all within topic focused subject matter. The Seminars provide students with an early connection to UB faculty and the undergraduate experience at a comprehensive, research university. This course is equivalent to any 199 offered in any subject. This course is a controlled enrollment (impacted) course. Students who have previously attempted the course and received a grade of F or R may not be able to repeat the course during the fall or spring semester.

Explores important themes in economic history, focusing on the drivers of economic growth. Topics include investment in human capital, technological innovation, improvements in health, and demographic change as well as income inequality, social mobility, and racial disparities. The course will examine major episodes in history such as the Slavery Era, the Industrial Revolution, the American Westward Expansion, the Great Depression, and the Baby Boom. Historical examples will be used to illuminate modern economic issues.

Studies the U.S. monetary system; including roles of financial institutions; commercial banking; creation of money; the Federal Reserve and monetary policy; and the macroeconomic relationships among money, interest rates, inflation, and gross domestic product.

Examines the American labor movement from its turbulent beginnings in the early nineteenth century with its emergence of unions through to the present day in which union power has retreated. It studies the economic and social determinants of this evolution.

Introduces the history of economic thought. Uses the original writings of prominent historical figures, such as Aristotle, Adam Smith, Karl Marx, Thorstein Veblen, and John M. Keynes.

Involves economic analysis of environmental problems. The course is issue-oriented; and considers such problems as air, water, and noise pollution; population growth; and environmental capacities.

Explores how cities form and contribute to economic growth. Examines the role of cities in developed and developing countries, how economic activities are allocated within cities, the economics of housing, transportation, pollution, property taxes, zoning, racial and income segregation and discrimination in cities, and urban poverty. ECO 209 and ECO 421 cannot both be taken for credit.

Comparative analysis of economic and political systems of capitalism, socialism, and mixed economies. Topics covered include market efficiency, rent-seeking, and regulation, and discussion of economic consequences of anarchy, democracy, and dictatorship.

Introduces health economics and the U.S. health care system. Basic economic principles are used to understand health-related economic issues and the impacts of various health policies. By the end of the course students are expected to be able engage in effective health policy evaluations and debates on these using economic reasoning.

Uses basic economic analysis to examine current economic issues in order to provide insight into the issues and potential remedies. Students will extensively participate in debates on these issues.

Involves an empirical assessment of the size and scope of government activity in the United States; attempts a comprehensive and empirical understanding of the economic activities and influence of government in the United States.

Provides applications of cost-benefit methods to U.S. economic policies. Course topics include economic efficiency, deadweight loss, present-valuations, and non-market valuation techniques for measuring economic costs and benefits that are difficult to quantify, such as those associated with health policies.

Examines regulatory controls in the U.S. economy and their effects on entry by firms into an industry. Considers prices, profits, and quantity produced; product quality; and competitive structure of an industry.

Explores the relationship between the legal concept of equity and the economic concept of efficiency. Discusses efficiency with some reference to optimality and contrasts it with the goal of equity. Draws applications from criminal and accident law.

Studies classes and groups that, in the economy, are characterized as 'impoverished'. Also studies causes of poverty and discrimination, and antipoverty and antidiscrimination socioeconomic policies.

Examines the theory of socialism, and history and economic structures of socialist economies within the context of social relations, including social conflict, state planning, workers' control, and economic development.

This lecture course provides an introduction to data analysis and to econometrics. Econometrics is a collection of methods that use data and statistical techniques to extract information from data, to answer real-world applied questions, and to test predictions of economic theory. Econometrics is used by government and business to study the effects of government policies, to use historical data to forecast future values of variables such as the gross domestic product, interest rates, unemployment, stock market prices, or sales growth. This course is the first in a sequence on applied economic statistics, econometrics, and data analysis. The focus is on applications and interpreting the findings of applied econometric studies.

Topics vary by semester.

Intermediate level. Examines economic theory dealing with the economics of price determination, value, distribution, and competition.

Introduces new theories and applied topics in microeconomics beyond the basic subjects studied in ECO 405. Covers a broad range of imperfect markets, including monopoly, oligopoly, and monopolistic competition. Also covers topics in game theory, uncertainty, investment and capital markets, general equilibrium analysis, externalities and public goods, and markets with asymmetric information.

Intermediate level. Uses economic theory to explain the causes of inflation, business fluctuations, unemployment, and economic growth. This course is dual-listed with ECO 507.

Topics vary according to instructor. Requires individual research.

Topics vary according to instructor. Requires individual research.

Investigates economic behavior of the health-care industry, including hospital services, physicians, and health insurance; and considers rationales for government intervention in planning and insuring.

Examines uses of the natural environment; their respective costs and benefits (and distributions thereof), and the problem of policy design to optimize environmental use and quality.

Studies the issues of poverty, economic development, and economic growth in low-income countries. Introduces diverse aspects of empirical findings in development and offers theories of development and policy implications.

The world's fastest-growing economies in the postwar period are clustered in East Asia. Provides, through economic analysis, a deeper knowledge of East Asian economic growth and an understanding of the growth and development process through real-world applications. With the focus on East Asian economies, covers major issues in economic development, theories of growth and convergence, and some current macroeconomic issues of East Asian countries. This course is dual-listed with ECO 518.

Explores theories of the existence and growth of urban economies, location and its relationship to industrial organization and trade, and the internal organization of cities. Further covers land and housing markets; pricing and resource allocation in urban transportation; the economics of local government, local public goods, property taxes, and zoning; and the economics of income and race segregation in urban areas. ECO 421 and ECO 209 cannot both be taken for credit.

The goal of this course is to enable students to learn the concepts and tools necessary to understand the interconnections between the financial side and the real side of the US economy and how the Fed impacts this through monetary policy. This course is dual-listed with ECO 525.

Involves an overview of financial decision making and the functions of financial markets. The course first focuses on financial decisions made by individuals and firms and then investigates the way these decisions are implemented through financial systems. The key concepts are resource allocation over time, evaluation of cash flow, risk management, project evaluation, and asset pricing models.

Introduces the international financial system; including the spot and forward foreign exchange markets; triangular arbitrage, currency futures, interest arbitrage, the balance of payments, fixed vs. flexible exchange rates, devaluation and the balance of trade, measuring and managing foreign exchange exposure, and import and export financing. This course is dual-listed with ECO 536.

Covers the classical law of comparative advantage; modern theories of trade (including the Heckscher-Ohlin and specific-factor models of trade); growth and trade; international factor movements; multinational corporations; trade-related international organizations; the effects of trade policies with tariffs, quotas, and other instruments; preferential trading arrangements; and topics in economic integration. Also covers briefly the balance of payments, foreign exchange markets, and the international monetary system. This course is dual-listed with ECO 535.

In-depth investigation of the Marxist theory of capitalism, centering on value and surplus value, accumulation of capital, and class struggle; also, this course considers the theory of pre-capitalist societies.

Analyzes various educational policies. Topics include returns to education, economics of class size, school quality effects, cognitive test achievements, school performance assessment, student dropout behavior and post-schooling labor market experience. This course is not aimed at addressing all questions in the economics of education. Instead, it provides basic concepts, tools, and economic intuition in addressing various educational issues from an economic point of view. Students should be able to apply these concepts and tools to other educational policy issues after completing this course.

Studies wage theory and the institutions that affect the supply of and demand for labor. Also examines wage differentials and such policy problems as unemployment, discrimination, and government regulation of wage-setting institutions.

Explores relationships among the techniques of human-capital formation (education, on-the-job training, financing, human-capital maintenance, health care, and job safety), human-capital mobility (occupational information, relocation), and economic performance.

Discusses mathematical techniques used in economic analysis, including optimization theory, consumer and producer optimization problems, and general equilibrium models.

Focuses on economic issues involving both information and Internet technology. On the information side, the course covers the value of information, issues that arise from information asymmetry, and costs of producing and distributing information. On the technology side, it discusses business implications of the Internet by introducing topics concerning market structure, entry barriers, and conduct and performance of firms. Also addresses issues concerning patents and copyrights in the context of electronic commerce. In addition to discussions and lectures, the course relies on cases, guest speakers, and student projects.

Considers alternative stochastic specifications of linear dynamic econometric models. Studies, among other topics, appropriate estimation techniques, the nature of the fluctuations (business cycles) of major economic variables (GNP, private investment, and so forth) implied by the models, and the problem of forecasting. Emphasizes time-series models.

Analyzes costs and benefits of government sector and taxation. Expenditure topics include public goods, public production of private goods, externalities, Coase theorem, and benefit-cost analysis. Revenue topics include tax incidence, neutrality, revenue productivity, and equity of alternative taxes.

Examines two- and N-person game theory, cooperative and noncooperative games, normal and extensive-form games, and complete and incomplete information games. This course is dual-listed with ECO 567.

Investigates economics of the sports industry; including league rules and formation, salaries of players, and TV and gate receipts as a general equilibrium model.

Studies structure of industries and firms in American and other advanced economies; price and production policies; relationships among structure, competition, efficiency.

Analyzes the economic criteria for regulatory policies and the effects of regulation in various sectors of the economy. This course is dual-listed with ECO 570.

Analyzes the emergence of ownership and property relationships and the effects of these on the production and distribution of products; also compares different property rights systems.

The objective of this class is to instruct students in the economic applications of multivariate linear regression models, using actual data. Conceptual understanding is stressed, rather than the mechanics of procedures. Topics include panel data, nonlinear regression functions, omitted variable bias, causal inference, using various models to analyze data, and critical assessment of studies that use these models. Emphasis is given to estimating econometric models using economic data. This is done using Stata, a computer statistical package.

Involves an in-depth analysis of basic general linear regression and several of its commonly used variants which allow for dummy variables, interaction terms, serial correlation, and heteroscedasticity, among other things. Additional topics include estimation and forecasting in the context of econometric time-series models,as well as simultaneous equation models. The course also covers index numbers and Chi-Square tests of independence in contingency models. Emphasizes empirically implementing most of the models on real-world data using standard computer software.

Uses SAS to demonstrate ways to analyze economic data utilizing various econometric techniques. Topics covered include basic linear regression models, binary choice models, and time series and simultaneous equation models. SAS programs are run, using real data. No prior knowledge of SAS is necessary.

Focuses on applications of the financial economics topics taught Masters-level programs, i.e. security valuation and analysis methods, security selection, portfolio managements, and alternative investment strategies. Topics include: financial statement analysis, valuation of equity and fixed income investments, quantitative methods, performance measurement and review of the CFA Ethics and Professional Standards.

Application of financial economics topics taught in Masters Economics Programs; such as security valuation and analysis methods, security selection, portfolio management, and alternative investment strategies. Topics include: the valuation of equity, fixed income investments, portfolio management strategies, and an introduction to derivatives markets.

Presents an advanced theory of money and its effect upon interest rates, prices, employment, and output.

Presents special topics of current interest, such as an overview of recent developments in trade theory, optimal trade and industrial policies in models with imperfect competition, issues in current trade negotiations, issues in services trade, global e-commerce, economic globalization, GATT and the WTO, free trade areas, customs unions, regionalism vs. multilateralism, the European Union (EU), and the future world monetary system.

Students who have at least junior status and satisfy the department's prerequisites may apply to serve as undergraduate teaching assistants for ECO 181 and ECO 182. Under the supervision of the professor, undergraduate teaching assistants lead discussion sections for the principles courses, reviewing core concepts and theories, answering questions from the students, and participating in the preparation of final grades.

Students arrange an internship in the private or public sector. As long as this position has a strong economics content, the student can apply to the director of undergraduate studies in economics for internship credit. Application must be made in advance and must be approved by the director of undergraduate studies.

Students with excellent records in Economics have the opportunity to participate in faculty research projects or to conduct their own original research under the supervision of a faculty mentor, thereby gaining first hand experience in economic research. Interested students should consult the Director of Undergraduate Studies or, if known, the faculty person with whom they wish to conduct research.

Involves development of an individual project of inquiry into an economics area of particular relevance to the student's interest, and in a topic or depth not currently offered through regular coursework.