MSc Economics Options Course Descriptions
These courses are taught during a six week period from from February to early April. They are designed to familiarise students with the main elements of the relevant theory and to introduce students to a range of more advanced topics and recent developments in Economics.
Students taking the MSc in Economics may choose any three courses from across the range of options offered on the programme and summarized below..
Advanced Topics in Macroeconomics
The course extends the core macroeconomics course to new developments in intertemporal macroeconomics, economic integration, and real business cycle theory. These are topics of key importance in contemporary macroeconomics, and the course is often taken by students who plan to do a Phd on mainstream macroeconomic theory or applied macroeconomics.
Advanced Topics In Microeconomics
The course looks at game theory and how it can be used to analyse a variety of economic issues, including bargaining, auctions, and the design of contracts. The course also covers recent advances in evolutionary game theory.
Advanced Topics In Quantitative Methods
This course builds on the core course in Quantitative Methods. It provides an opportunity to cover a range of advanced topics in time-series and cross-section analysis, including limited dependent variables, panel data and vector autoregressions.
Asset Pricing
The aim of the module is to provide students with a good foundation in asset pricing, by using a blend of theoretical concepts, empirical evidence and some applications of the theory. The intention is for the students to increase their knowledge and understanding of modern finance theory. Within this context, the module covers the following topics: mean-variance analysis, the Capital Asset Pricing Model, the Arbitrage Pricing Theory, derivatives pricing; market microstructure with respect to Efficiency Market Hypothesis, security exchanges, asymmetric information and noise traders; behavioural finance and Individual portfolio choices. Student taking the MSc Economics (Finance) degree must take this course as part of their degree.
Corporate Finance
The aim of the module is to develop students’ knowledge and understanding of corporate finance theory and empirical evidence, specifically in the areas of capital structure, payout policy, corporate governance, and new equity issues. Student taking the MSc Economics (Finance) degree must take this course as part of their degree.
Development Economics
The course aims at providing students with an introduction to the recent research in development economics. As the following key themes indicate the focus will be on market imperfections, institutions and various governance issues in the context of economic development. Students will be exposed to a blend of theoretical models and empirical applications enabling them to get a better understanding of the obstacles to economic development.
Development Of Economic Thought & Methodology
The aim of this course is to promote an understanding of how economic theory has developed, in terms of the questions addressed, the types of theory developed to address these questions, and the methodological underpinnings of these theories. The course covers the key developments in the history of economic thought and its methodology from the pre-Enlightenment period up to the present day.
Economic Policy
The aim of this course is two-fold. The first is to present the student with a series of topics that are currently policy relevant. The second is to provide the student with an understanding of how economics can be used to enlighten the debate surrounding these topics. The topics of this course will be reviewed annually in order to ensure that the course remains current. This course should be particularly of interest to those students interested in pursuing a career as an economist with the civil service. Recent topics have included UK productivity performance, policy evaluation and the usefuness of social and natural experiments, UK transport policy, health policy and regional policy.
Environmental and Natural Resource Economics
The course intends to provide students with an introduction to the application of economic theory to the subject area. There is a strong focus on policy issues and policy remedies to identified problems, and the course will be structured around an organising theme of sustainability.
Experimental Economics
Introduced to the programme in 2009 and taught by lecturers from the University of Aberdeen’s Scottish Experimental Economics Laboratory (SEEL), a dedicated state-of-the-art purpose-built computer laboratory used by experimental economists as well as by researchers in other disciplines wishing to use experimental methods for their own work.
Health Economics
Re-introduced to the programme in 2011 and taught by lecturers from the University of Dundee and the University of Aberdeen’s Health Economics Research Unit (HERU), Health Economics applies economic thinking to the analysis of health and health care. It is a relatively young sub-discipline but is growing rapidly.
Industrial Organisation
The aims of the course are to enable students to make intelligent access to the research literature in Industrial Economics, to provide illustrations of areas of
application of both applied econometrics and advanced microeconomics as developed in courses elsewhere on the programme, and to facilitate the cultivation of skills in industrial economics to a level which would lay the basis for research work within academia or industry.
International Money And Finance
The course aims to cover the major recent developments in the field of International Money and Finance. There is of a blend of theoretical, applied econometric and institutional material. The course will consider: theoretical and applied aspects of exchange rate determination; the efficiency of foreign exchange markets; regimes of the international monetary system; the international transmission of macroeconomic shocks and the case for policy
coordination; implications for the effectiveness of macroeconomic policies of alternative assumptions about wage-price flexibility in a standard open
economy macro-model; the operation of the European Monetary System and its effectiveness in aiding the convergence process. Student taking the MSc Economics (Finance) degree must take this course as part of their degree.
International Trade
This course is intended to explain the reasons that countries trade with each other and the benefits that arise from this trade; to demonstrate the role of
governments in regulating international trade in order to promote national interests; to give an insight into the nature and causes of trade arising between and within imperfectly competitive industries; to provide an understanding of the determinants of the spatial location of production; to explain why industry may agglomerate; and to examine the economics of regional integration.
Personnel Economics
The course examines the theories and empirical evidence concerning the way incentives are structured within organisations. This is an active area of current research, and will be of interest to students interested in the application of incentive theory in the real world.
Topics in Economic History
This course explores selected topics in economic history. The specific mix of topics will vary from year to year, but will be drawn from a wide range of eras and subjects: pre-industrial revolution economies; the industrial and financial revolutions of the 17th-19th centuries; the economics of slavery in the US; financial and economic crises of the 20th century, including the Great Depression; and the experience of central planning and its collapse in the USSR and Eastern Europe.