Results for MGTECON

This course covers microeconomic concepts relevant to managerial decision-making. Topics may include: demand and supply analysis; consumer demand theory; production theory; price discrimination; perfect competition; partial equilibrium welfare analysis; externalities and public goods; risk aversion and risk sharing; hidden information and market signaling; moral hazard and incentives; rudimentary game theory; reputation and credibility, auctions and transaction cost economics.

MGTECON 203 is the accelerated option in microeconomics for 1st year MBA students. It will cover the usual array of topics covered in microeconomics, with an emphasis on topics more useful for students of management. Tentative plans are to "reverse" the usual flow of topics, beginning with the economics of small numbers interactions (using the language of noncooperative game theory and emphasizing the economics of information and transactions costs), moving in the end to markets with large numbers of participants (perfect competition and variants). In comparison with MGTECON 200, less time will be spent in class (and in preparation) on basic problems, and more time will be spent on case studies. Therefore, students choosing this option should be able to do basic problems "on their own." Useful background includes a previous course in microeconomics and/or proficiency at simple differential calculus; either may be sufficient, but students without either should elect 200. A good diagnostic is to read Chapter 3 ("Marginal This and Marginal That") in Kreps, Microeconomics for Managers. If you find this relatively easy, 203 is a good choice. (Students with very strong background in microeconomics should take the Advanced Applications option.) If you find this a struggle, 200 is the right course for you.

The first portion of this course covers business decision making within the firm; behavior of individual markets reacting to supply and demand forces; consequences of alternative market structures and business policies; and interactions between the public and private sectors. Specific topics include supply and demand analysis, consumer behavior, theory of cost and production, pricing and competition, factor pricing, and the concepts of marginal analysis. The second portion covers the macro, or aggregative, aspects of the economy. Specific topics include national income accounts; the determination of the level of aggregate output, employment, and prices; the monetary system, including the effects of monetary policy; fiscal policy; economic growth; and international monetary economics.

This course gives students the background they need to understand the broad movements in the global economy. Key topics include long-run economic growth, technological change, wage inequality, international trade, interest rates, inflation, exchange rates, and monetary policy. By the end of the course, students should be able to read and understand the discussions of economic issues in The Economist, the Wall Street Journal, the New York Times, or the Congressional Budget Office.

This is an advanced applications economics course that applies recent innovations and high-powered tools to organization and general management. MBA1 students must have a strong background in microeconomics to take the course and should consult with their advisors. The course is appropriate for all MBA2 students. The course objective is to equip managers with an extensive set of analytical and applicable tools for handling the following topics: organization for coordination, designing incentives for moral hazard, monitoring and private information, applications to scope, scale, global management and mergers, principles for allocating decision power, managing supplier relations, downstream controls, franchising and alliances, bargaining, repeated interactions and reputation, holdups and strategizing with unawareness. These topics will be covered in a combination of lectures and cases.

The purpose of this class is to provide students with the economic tools, and the institutional and legal background, to understand how markets for health care products and services work. The class has four parts, consisting of a combination of case studies, lectures, and visits from individuals from the industry: 1) the economic tools: understanding moral hazard and adverse selection; 2) the institutional organization of the health care sector in the US-hospital and physician services markets-integrated delivery systems-managed care-pharmaceutical and medical device industries; 3) public policy issues in health care, medical ethics, regulation of managed care, regulation of pharmaceuticals, reform of Medicare, and coverage of the uninsured; 4) international perspective-how have other countries' health care systems evolved and what can the US learn from their experience. Also listed as Health Research and Policy (HRP) 391.

For graduate students. The principal evaluative techniques for health care, including utility assessment, cost-effectiveness analysis, cost-benefit analysis, and decision analysis. Emphasis is on the practical application of these techniques. Group project presented at end of quarter. Guest lectures by experts from the medical school, pharmaceutical industry, health care plans, and government.

The objective of this course is to give students an understanding of what international trade policy means for business leaders. To do this students will have to understand the economic forces that determine the patterns and consequences of international trade. We will analyze trade policy tools used by governments (e.g., tariffs, subsidies and quotas), and examine the role of industry and politics at the domestic and global level in applying these tools. This course will combine lecture, case studies and group interaction.

Need approval from sponsoring faculty member and GSB Registrar.

The course will review the results from a large management practices project involving the London School of Economics, McKinsey & Company and Stanford. In 2001 McKinsey produced a basic management practice evaluation tool - detailing the 18 key practices in firms - which has been used to evaluate firms in manufacturing, retail, law and the public sector across the US, Europe, Asia and South America. These results provide an insight into the basic management practices around monitoring, targets and talent management that firms adopt around the world, their link to performance, and the reasons for differences in these across countries. This will be supplemented with the results from more recent research with Accenture and the World Bank in India carrying out change-management interventions.nnnThe material will cover the following:nnnScience of Management PracticesnnThe key practices that appear to help determine company performance. A combination of a detailed discussion of the management practice grid, class examples and self-scoring, and results from the research work on 6000 firms. The aim is to teach students a basic management practice evaluation tool that can be used to perform an initial overview of the management practices of any organization.nn nnWhy management practices vary around the worldnnWhat explains why so many firms around the world appear not to be adopting management best practices? The aim is to explain why organizations often are unable to adopt managerial best practices and what types of actions can help to address this.nnnHow firms are differently organized around the worldnnMore recent work has focused on why firms in some countries are very flat with decentralized decision making (US, UK, Canada and Scandinavia) while others are very hierarchical (Southern Europe, China and India). The aim is to use this to illustrate with extensive data and case studies some of the key organizational and cultural differences of firms across countries, and how this helps to explain national performance.nnnInterested students can look at some of the academic, business and media focused output from the research on: http://www.stanford.edu/~nbloom/. There is also a large collection of press clippings covering the work, including from the Economics, New York Times and Wall Street Journal.

This course provides an introduction to the foundations of modern microeconomic theory. Topics include choice theory, with and without uncertainty, consumer and producer theory, dynamic choice and dynamic programming, social choice and efficiency, and fundamentals of general equilibrium.

This course studies the roles of information, incentives and strategic behavior in markets. The rudiments of game theory are developed and applied to selected topics regarding auctions, bargaining, and firms' competitive strategies; information economics; and contracting and market design.

This course intensively studies the theory of auctions and the related literature in bargaining and pricing. Key papers in the early part of the course are Myerson and Satterthwaite on bargaining, Myerson on optimal auctions, and Milgrom and Weber's classic work. We then turn to markets in which complicated preferences and constraints, limitations on the use of cash, or variations in contract details among bidders decisively impair the performance of simple market rules. Emphasis is on Matching markets such as the National Resident Matching Program, asset auctions such as the spectrum auctions. The course also discusses literature on dynamic bargaining, starting with the classic Coase conjecture and reviewing some of the recent developments.

This is the first course in the sequence in graduate econometrics. The course covers basic probability and statistics and, accordingly, is most appropriately viewed as a background course in these topics in preparation for taking up econometrics in 604. Prerequisites are a strong background in undergraduate calculus, linear algebra and probability and statistics. Topics covered in the course include random variables, distribution functions, functions of random variables, expectations, conditional probabilities and Bayes' law, convergence and limit laws, hypothesis testing, confidence intervals, linear regression and maximum likelihood estimation.

This course presents a comprehensive treatment of econometric methods for linear models. Among the topics covered are: the classical linear regression analysis, linear simultaneous equations systems, panel data models, generalized method of moments. This course assumes working knowledge of basic linear algebra, basic probability theory, and statistics that are covered in MGTECON603. Those who did not take MGTECON603 or ECO270 (by Hansen and Hong in the economics department) should see the instructor.

This course completes the first-year sequence in econometrics. The course initially develops the theoretical and practical aspects of maximum likelihood, quasi-maximum likelihood, GMM and non-linear estimators in greater detail. The instructor will then discuss how these methods are used in practice. Time permitting, we will briefly consider more advanced topics and applications, including: time series methods, nonparametric estimators and simulation estimators.

Students and faculty review and present recent research papers on basic theories and economic applications of decision theory, game theory and mechanism design. Applications include market design and analyses of incentives and strategic behavior in markets, and selected topics such as auctions, bargaining, contracting, and computation.

The goal of this course is to teach students how to use the tools of open economy macroeconomics to connect to the burgeoning literature on institutions in a way that helps them to frame interesting research questions in the area of stabilization, reform, and growth in developing countries.nnnThe growth rate of total factor productivity (TFP) plays an essential role in economic growth. In turn, two principal forces drive TFP growth: (1) changes in ideas (i.e. technological change) and (2) changes in institutions. This course will employ the tools of open economy macroeconomics to study the second of these two forces. Recent contributions in the literature focus on the impact of cross-country differences in initial institutions on long-run growth and development. Prominent examples of such institutional differences include the nature of the legal origins and property rights bequeathed to a country by its colonial masters.nnnThis is a PhD course in economics, but it is open to students from any discipline (i.e. Political Science, History, International Relations) who are willing to make the analytical investment that is necessary to understand and debate the issues in a logical, coherent, and systematic fashion.

The goal of this course is to introduce students to current research topics and open issues related to the design and organization of markets. Topics may include: theoretical and empirical analysis of auctions and matching markets; information aggregation in prediction markets and other mechanisms; microstructure of financial markets; e-commerce and novel marketplaces.

This is an advanced game theory course and requires a basic background in game theory or an advanced applied game theory course. The course covers foundational topics such as type spaces, modeling reasoning and rationality, game forms, solution refinements and more. A collection of additional topics will be covered independently via problem solving assignment in workshop style meetings with student presentations.

This workshop is a forum for presentation of current work and general discussion of research in microeconomic theory. Focus is on game-theoretic analyses but any methodology is welcomed, as are topics from related fields such as macroeconomics, experimental/behavioral economics, electronic commerce, computer science, law, political science, and psychology. Meetings are scheduled to match the supply of work-in-progress ready for presentation, averaging three times per month from October to May. An enrolled participant (in September, for 2 units) must present and submit a paper during the year; unenrolled participants are welcome. Part one of a three course sequence

This course is offered for students requiring specialized training in an area not covered by existing courses. To register, a student must obtain permission from the faculty member who is willing to supervise the reading.

This course is elected as soon as a student is ready to begin research for the dissertation, usually shortly after admission to candidacy. To register, a student must obtain permission from the faculty member who is willing to supervise the research.

This seminar will examine applications of labor economics to business issues and firms' practices. Material will include both theoretical and empirical work, and the syllabus will range from classics in Personnel Economics to current (unpublished) research. Some of the topics to be covered include, but are not limited to, compensation practices, assignment of decision rights, organizational structure, attracting, retaining, and displacing employees, and workplace practices (such as team-based organization, profit sharing, etc.)