This course develops macroeconomic models of the determinants of economic activity, inflation, unemployment, and economic growth. The models are used to analyze recent monetary and fiscal policy issues in the United States, and also to analyze the controversies separating schools of macroeconomic thought such as the New Keynesians, Monetarists and New Classicals. A student may not receive credit for both ECON 330 and ECON 331.

This course covers similar material to that covered in ECON 300 but is mathematically more rigorous and moves at a more rapid pace. A student may not receive credit for both ECON 300 and ECON 301.

Requisite: At least a "B" grade in ECON 111/111E or a "B-" grade in ECON 200-290, or equivalent, and MATH 211 or equivalent, or consent of the instructor. Fall semester. Professor Ishii.

This course develops the tools of modern microeconomic theory and notes their applications to matters of utility and demand; production functions and cost; pricing of output under perfect competition, monopoly, oligopoly, etc.; pricing of productive services; intertemporal decision-making; the economics of uncertainty; efficiency, equity, general equilibrium; externalities and public goods. A student may not receive credit for both ECON 300 and ECON 301.

Independent Reading Course. Full course.

Fall and spring semesters. The Department.

In the Declaration of Independence, the Founders called the “pursuit of happiness” an “inalienable right,” yet both psychologists and economists have noted that we do not well understand the determinants of the attainment of happiness or contentment. In this course, we will examine the literature on well-being in both micro- and macroeconomic contexts. We will review the neoclassical model of utility maximization and contrast it to other modes of understanding how and why people make the decisions they do, as they pursue their happiness.

This course studies the monetary systems that facilitate exchange. Such systems overcame the limitations of barter with commodity monies such as gold, and gradually evolved into financial intermediaries that issue paper notes and bank deposits as money. Intermediaries in markets for insurance, debt, and equity are studied too. Also, the effects of financial markets on aggregate economic activity and the level and term structure of interest rates are studied. Not open to students who have taken ECON 423.

Independent reading.

Fall and spring semesters.

Computer operating systems are responsible for allowing multiple running programs to share hardware resources.  The policies that dictate how those resources are shared determine the system's ability to provide good performance, fair sharing, isolation between programs, and predictable behavior.  There are many interacting policy choices that determine these properties, and measuring the effect of each requires careful empirical experimentation and analysis.  Research papers will describe and analyze policies that control processor scheduling, memory allocation and cachi

Independent reading.

Fall and spring semesters.

This course examines the theory of games in all forms, including traditional non-cooperative simultaneous-play games and their relevance to economics, psychology, and biology; iterated games; combinatorial games such as chess, checkers, and Go; imperfect information games; and stochastic games.  The course also considers data structures and algorithms relevant to games, the computational complexity of games, and the use of techniques from artificial intelligence to compute strategies when it is infeasible to compute the optimal strategy.  Students will have an opportunity to devel