Courses & Seminars

Provides foundational material for analytical studies of financial markets. Emphasis is on continuous time mathematics as applied to pricing of financial assets

Requisites: courses 230, 239A. Foundations of theory of firm capitalization and investment decisions, with special attention to questions of exchange and allocative efficiency.

Focus on measuring and understanding risk premiums in financial markets. Study of evidence pertaining to pricing kernel and applied theoretical developments that are motivated by evidence.

Preparation: introductory probability. Requisite: course 201C. Theory of individual decision making under uncertainty, applied to topics such as asset pricing models, adverse selection, moral hazard, bargaining, signaling, auctions, and search.

Linear regression model, specification error, functional form, autocorrelation, nonlinear estimation, distributed lags, nonnormality, univariate time series, qualitative dependent variables, aggregation, structural change, and errors-in-variables.

Multivariate regression, errors-in-variables, simultaneous equations, identification, proxy variables, latent variables, factor analysis of panel data, asymptotic distribution theory.

131A - Requisites: courses 32B, 33B. Rigorous introduction to foundations of real analysis; real numbers, point set topology in Euclidean space, functions, continuity.

131B - Requisites: courses 33B, 115A, 131A. Derivatives, Riemann integral, sequences and series of functions, power series, Fourier series.

Requisites: courses 121, 131A-131B. Basic measure theory. Measure theory on locally compact spaces. Fubini theorem. Elementary aspects of Banach and Hilbert spaces and linear operators. Function spaces. Radon/Nikodym theorem. Fourier transform and Plancherel on Rn and Tn.

Requisite: Mathematics M170A or Electrical Engineering 131A. Fundamentals of stochastic processes, including Poisson processes, renewal theory, and Markov chains. Sequential stochastic (usually Markovian) decision processes in discrete and continuous time. Emphasis on problem formulation and characterization and computations of optimal policies, often via dynamic programming, applications to inventory, queueing, maintenance, reliability, and replacement problems.