Programme

PhD

Term

VI

Academic Year

2021-22

Course title

Computational Economics

Area

Economics

Credits

0.75

Instructor(s)

Prof. Mohsen Mohaghegh

Course Description & Objectives

Objectives: This course is designed for PhD students with an interest in doing research in macroeconomics, labor economics, finance, international economics, and operations management. The primary goal of the course is to provide students with the numerical methods necessary to solve quantitative dynamic general equilibrium models with both representative and heterogeneous agents. Doing so will be through in-class lectures that will cover the needed computational tools, and a series of out-of-class activities that will help students apply these methods to economic models. Modern economic research is rapidly shifting towards models that allow for nonlinear global maximization techniques for non-identical economic decision makers. Therefore, this course, for interested students, is an important step towards conducting their own research both because it covers much of the technique they need, and because it exposes them to many important economic questions on the frontier of research such as inequality, income risks, and firm heterogeneity. Though, the coursework can be completed with MATLAB, students are free to work with their own preferred language including Fortran, C, Julia, Python.