Econ 502. Macroeconomics

Models of aggregate supply and demand, theories of consumption and investment, money supply and demand, inflation, rational expectations, stabilization policy, financial markets, and international finance.

Econ 520. Labor Supply and Human Capital Formation

Labor supply decisions and empirical analysis for agricultural operators and other self-employed and wage-earning households; multiple job holding; resource allocation in productive households; human capital formation by households, firms, and public institutions, which includes schooling, on-the-job training, migration, health, research, raising of children, and implications for household income and welfare; applications to problems in rural areas of developing and developed countries.

Econ 530. Advanced Farm Management

Offered off campus as demand warrants. Risk management principles applied to agriculture. Sources of risk and uncertainty. Attitudes toward risk. Techniques for analyzing and controlling production, marketing, financial, legal and human risk. Designed for master of agriculture program only.

Econ 533. Economic and Business Decision Tools

Team taught by faculty in the Department of Economics and the College of Business, this course focuses on applied economic and business tools for decision making. The topics include: Monte Carlo analysis with applications to option pricing and insurance mechanism design, portfolio analysis using existing standard spreadsheet software and add-ons, dynamic programming tools for inventory management and sequential decisions, discrete choice modeling and statistical bootstrapping, and financial performance evaluation using commercially available software.

Econ 537. Commodity Markets: Analysis and Strategy

Analysis of exchange-traded and over-the-counter commodity markets, their functions and performance. Evaluation of hedging, speculation, and arbitrage strategies. Commodity transformation over space and time. Valuation of derivatives and comparison with derivatives on financial assets. Efficiency and the role of information in commodity markets. Market regulation.

Econ 553. Applied Research in Monetary and Macroeconomics

Application of economic theory to the analysis of contemporary issues in macroeconomics, monetary economics, and financial economics.

Econ 560. Agricultural, Food, and Trade Policy

Description and analysis of economic problems of U.S. agriculture. Explanation and economic analysis of government policies and programs to develop agriculture, conserve agricultural resources, address consumer food concerns, stabilize farm prices, and raise farm incomes. The influence of macroeconomic policy, world economy, international trade, and bioenergy on U.S. agriculture.

Econ 571. Intermediate Econometrics

Single and multiple equation regression models; dummy explanatory variables; serial correlation; heteroskedasticity; distributed lags; qualitative dependent variables; simultaneity. Use of econometric models for tests of economic theories and forecasting.

Econ 580. Intermediate Environmental and Resource Economics

Theories of natural resource utilization and allocation. Externalities, public goods, and environmental quality. Renewable energy, biofuels, land use change and life cycle analysis of carbon, and sustainability and resource conservation. Methodologies for analyzing natural resource and environmental problems and evaluating resource policies.

Econ 590. Special Topics

Econ 600. Quantitative Methods in Economic Analysis II

Unconstrained and equality- and inequality-constrained optimization; the Kuhn-Tucker formulation; abstract spaces; dynamic programming; dynamical systems.

Econ 602. Macroeconomic Analysis

Neoclassical aggregate growth models; the overlapping generations model; endogenous growth models; equilibrium business cycle theories; equilibrium job search and matching; models of money; fiscal and monetary policy; income and wealth distribution.

Econ 604. Advanced Macroeconomic Analysis

Topics will be selected from: new Keynesian approaches to business cycle theory; endogenously generated business cycles; models of credit and financial intermediation; mechanism design and time inconsistency issues; political economy models; heterogeneous-agent models with strategic interaction; path dependence, network effects, and lock-in; economies as evolving self-organizing systems.

Econ 606. Advanced Topics in Macroeconomics

Selected topics in macroeconomic theory of current significance to the profession.

Econ 616. Empirical Methods in Industrial Organization

Empirical methods in industrial organization. Measurement of market power. Discrete choice models of product differentiation. Empirical studies of price dynamics, entry, collusion, price discrimination, technology adoption, asymmetric information, and auctions.

Econ 641. Agricultural Economics I

Advanced treatment of topics in agricultural economics with emphasis on optimization models. Part 1: Applied duality in production and demand models. Flexible representation of production and demand systems. Production efficiency and nonparametric analysis. Production models with risk. Part 2: The role of contracts in the organization and coordination of agricultural production. Distribution of asset ownership, allocation of risk among parties, and the structure of incentive systems. Rationale for cooperative efforts and information sharing. The role of information, insurance, and credit.

Econ 653. Financial Economics

Review of decision-making under uncertainty. Portfolio Theory. Theoretical foundations of asset valuation models: capital asset pricing model (CAPM), arbitrage pricing theory (APT), representative agent models, pricing of derivative securities. Complete and incomplete asset markets, credit markets, financial intermediaries, the role of government in the financial sector. Market frictions, crashes, bubbles. Applications of asset valuation models, with emphasis on their testable implications.

Econ 655. International Trade

Theories of international trade; welfare and distributional aspects of trade and commercial policies. Optimal trade policies in the presence of domestic distortions; strategic trade policy; international trade and economic growth.

Econ 671. Econometrics I

Probability and distribution theory for univariate and multivariate normal random variables, introduction to the theory of estimators for linear models, hypothesis testing and inference, introduction to large sample properties of estimators; derivation of common estimators and their properties for the classical and general multiple regression models, hypothesis testing, forecasting, implications of specification errors - missing data, left-out regressors, measurement error, stochastic regressors.

Econ 673. Microeconometrics

Econometric treatment of models arising in microeconometric applications. Methods are primarily concerned with the analysis of cross-section data. Topics may include: systems of demand equations in panel data settings, random utility models of discrete choices, production possibilities frontier estimation, and discrete/continuous models of participation and consumption.

Econ 675. Advanced Topics in Econometrics

Advanced treatment of issues important in econometrics. Topics chosen from asymptotic theory, nonlinear estimation, Bayesian and robust econometrics, econometric time series, limited dependent variables and censored regression models, nonparametric and semiparametric methods, bootstrapping and Monte Carlo techniques, etc.

Econ 690. Advanced Topics

Econ 693. Workshops