Determinants of competitive strategy in a variety of market structures; How the structure of industry affects strategic choices and performance. Topics include the dynamic aspects of pricing, entry and predation in concentrated industries, and product differentiation, product proliferation and innovation as competitive strategies.

Analysis of strategic interactions that commonly arise in economic, business, political, and judicial arenas. A systematic introduction to game theory and some of its applications, such as market competition, technological races, auctions, party competition for votes, and bargaining.

Principles of taxation and the role of government: excess burden and optimal taxation; voting and its relevance for public finance; redistribution of income and wealth; inflation and public finance. Welfare economics. Analysis of public sector decision making and privatization. Project evaluation and cost-benefit analysis.

Theoretical and empirical examination of economic problems in urban areas. Formation and development of cities: city size and patterns of urban growth, land rent and land-use patterns within metropolitan areas. Urban problems: housing, transportation, poverty, education, crime; sorting issues. Local government spending and revenue.

Topics will be announced when offered.

Theoretical and empirical examination of commercial bank operations with specific reference to the Turkish Banking industry. Money supply and demand; the role of commercial banks in the economy and their regulation by monetary authorities; stability of the financial system; bank contracts and their pricing and management with respect to interest rates; inflation and credit risk; securitization of bank assets; factors behind the rapidly growing non-bank sources of corporate funds; the future of banking.

Common characteristics of developing countries; the role of institutional infrastructure in economic development; alternative theories of development. Economics of growth: capital, labor, human capital and technology. Income distribution and poverty; population growth; urbanization; migration; education; the environment; agricultural progress in the process of economic development.

Theories of economic growth that explain differences in the level as well as the growth rate of income per capita across countries and time. Empirical research motivated by and, in return, led to the development of new models of economic growth. The Harrod-Domar, Solow-Swan growth models that focus on the role of physical capital, population growth, technical change, human capital, land and other natural resources in the growth process. The Cambridge theories of growth that focus on growth and income distribution. Productivity decline, conditional and unconditional convergence, and income distribution across countries. Endogenous growth models and the scope of institutional factors and government policies in the growth process.

Joint probability distributions, moments, conditional distributions, conditional expectation function, best prediction; bivariate normal; random sampling and sampling distributions; estimation; inference; introduction to asymptotic theory. Linear regression: least squares method, simple and multiple regression; classical regression model, inference and applications. Extensions: generalized regression; nonlinear regression; instrumental variables; maximum likelihood method; specification testing.

Overview of least squares techniques; departure from standard assumptions: generalized least squares, instrumental variables estimation and generalized method of moments; maximum likelihood estimation; generalization to models with multiple dependent variables: Seemingly Unrelated Regressions, Vector Auto-Regressions, Simultaneous Equations Models; Introduction to Time Series Econometrics.

International financial markets and emerging market economies: the context, record, and recent developments; Recent developments in exchange rate and monetary policy regimes; Financial crisis in emerging markets and industrial economies: key issues and lessons; IMF: Its role, functions, and critiques; Issues surrounding public debt and sovereign defaults.

The use of laboratory and field experiments as a data collection method for understanding economic decisions and testing economic theories; how to design a good and valid economics experiment, the methodology of experimental design. The topics that will be studied theoretically and experimentally in the course include decision-making under risk and uncertainty, decision-making over time and related psychological phenomena/biases, market experiments, bargaining experiments, social preferences, fairness and altruism, incentive schemes and motivation, gender and economic decisions.

Analysis of problems created by informational asymmetries between agents and how to design contracts to solve these problems; Topics covered include adverse selection, screening, signaling, and moral hazard; Applications to insurance, labor, and credit markets, auctions, and corporate finance.

Topics will be announced when offered.

Topics will be announced when offered.