Fall 2025

The philosophical foundations of modern political and economic thought, including economic rationality, neoclassical economics, free-market vs. socialist economies and behavioral economics.

Behavior of firms and consumers, functions of the price system, competition and monopoly, labor markets, poverty, government regulation, international trade, and the environment.

Unemployment, inflation and output determination and links.Effects of government taxation and spending on growth, investment,saving, consumption, and trade.

Decision-making by business firms, consumer preferences and behavior, uncertainty, competition, monopoly, labor and resource markets, efficient resource allocation, externalities, and government policy.

The determinants of aggregate income, employment, and inflation; economic fluctuations; fiscal and monetary policy; financial markets; the national debt.

Introduction to statistical methods appropriate for analyzing economic data: probability theory, random variables and probability distributions, sampling, estimation, statistical inference.

Application of statistical methods to economic data: estimating economic relationships using regression analysis, testing hypotheses involving economic behavior, forecasting economic variables.

Contemporary economic problems of sub-Saharan economies: policies and endowments. Focus on issues of poverty, agriculture, health, macroeconomy and political economy.

Development and business applications of: theory of the firm; theory of the consumer; inter-temporaldecisions; decisions under risk; market failures; industrial and enterprise structure. Prerequisites: MATH 118 or MATH 125 or MATH 126 or MATH 226. Not for major credit for: Economics, Economics/Mathematics, Social Sciences (Economics). Duplicates credit in BUAD 351.

Theoretical development and significance to business and markets of economic growth; inflation;unemployment; monetary and fiscal policy; business cycles; savings and investment; exchange rates. Corequisite: ECON 351. Recommended preparation: introductory economics course, high school math, and algebra. Not for major credit for: Economics, Economics/Mathematics, Social Sciences (Economics). Duplicates credit in BUAD 352.

The money, bond, stock, and other financial markets; portfolio choice; determinants of asset prices and interest rates; inflation; interactions between financial markets and government policies.

Urban trends and problems, including changing urban form and function, urban public finance, housing, renewal, poverty, race, transportation, and the environment.

Selected policy dilemmas in economics. Topics vary.

Analysis of strategic economic interactions. Topics include bargaining, insurance, patents, voting, environment depletion, strategic trade, learning, reputation, strikes, corporate takeovers, and the provision of public goods.

Examination of economic theories and patterns of behavior useful in building new theories. Prerequisite ECON-303; Recommended preparation: ECON-317.

Determinants and economic consequences of international trade patterns; effects of trade restrictions and trading blocs; trade negotiations and arrangements.

Consequences of trade deficits; theories of capital and currency markets, exchange rate regimes, and international monetary coordination.

General equilibrium analysis of economics with financial markets; decision making under uncertainty; methods of risk reduction; portfolio theory and valuation of securities; efficiency of security markets.

A capstone course that introduces state-of-the-art estimation methods for high-dimensional data.

Fundamental principles in designing successful market mechanisms to allocate resources.

Economic consulting and managerial economic methods applied in real world problems. Economic methods to analyze issues of intellectual property, environmental damage, trademark infringement, brand value, and consumer demand.

The analysis of public policy debates combining the different tools and perspectives of philosophy, political science and economic theory.

Management and extraction of renewable and non-renewable natural resources; environmental externalities and regulation of air, water, and land pollution; market incentives versus direct regulation.

Supervised individual research. Not available for graduate credit. Requires departmental approval.

Individual research supervised by a faculty advisor. Successful completion required for departmental honors degree.

Theories of the household and the firm; product and factor markets; perfect and imperfect competition; welfare criteria.

Theories of aggregate economic activity; design and use of macroeconometric models; stabilization and control of inflation, unemployment, and growth.

Applying game theory to economic and financial markets and interactions in a diverse set of examples like reputation, herding, bubbles and crashes, auctions, strategic information revelation and information accumulation in markets. Witnessing the wide range of applications that is amenable to game theoretical analysis.

Investigate human behavior in Economics. Use neuroscience as a new lens on financial decision-making; focus on specific topics in behavioral and neuro-finance.

Application of econometric tools using standard econometric software packages for microcomputers; empirical applications to selected economic problems of estimation and inference.

Understanding and implementing models commonly used in time series econometrics. Emphasis is placed on intuition and application. Assists students understanding how to use time series data to test hypotheses and serve as an introduction to the ideas and techniques of forecasting.

The balance of payments, macroeconomic policy in an open economy, exchange rate determination, exchange rate systems, currency crises, international financial arrangements and monetary history.

Introduction and exploration of quantitative methods and data sources used for applied trade policy analysis.

Introduction to market design; combined use of economic theory, experiments and empirical analysis; analyze and engineer market rules and institutions.

Introduction to the theory and practice of causal econometrics in modern settings of large-scale data. Major algorithms from machine learning focused on methodology and applications.

Introduces the novel business model and important features associated with digital platforms and analyzes firms various competitive behavior and anticompetitive conducts in the digital space.

Broad training in theoretical and empirical finance. Choice under uncertainty; equilibrium asset pricing; static portfolio choice; factor pricing models, asset allocation; the Black-Scholes-Merton Formula.

Explores topics in industrial organization by examining models of competitive, oligopolistic and monopolistic markets. Emphasizes innovation and technology through incentives, intellectual property rights, royalty rate determination and economic methods.

Economic methods to analyze issues of intellectual property, environmental damage, trademark infringement, brand value and consumer demand, using an applied econometric approach.

Advanced methods used in applied economics and consulting. Topics are case based.

Research leading to the master's degree. Maximum units which may be applied to the degree to be determined by the department. Graded CR/NC.

Practical principles for the long-term development of effective teaching within college disciplines. Intended for teaching assistants in Dornsife College. Open only to doctoral students in Economics. Graded CR/NC.

Part-time or full-time, practical work experience in the student's field of study. Students must have a specific job/internship offer. Job must be related to students major. The internship must be located at an off-campus facility. Students are individually supervised by faculty. Students must have been in F-1 student status for at least one academic year in a degree-seeking program before they can apply for CPT, with a cumulative 3.0 GPA. Course does not apply to degree credit. Open only to graduate students.

Optimization of the consumer and the firm; duality and imputed value; perfect and imperfect competition in product and factor markets.

Aggregate demand, supply and government policy; theories of economic growth and business cycles; static and dynamic implications of government policies.

Advanced methodology of neuroeconomics including neural activity, memory, value and reward systems, emotions and risk.

Introduction to probability theory and statistical inference to prepare students for graduate courses in econometrics and economic theory; probability, random variables, distributions, estimation, testing, asymptotics.

Simultaneous equation models, dynamic structural econometric models, vector autoregressions, causality, forecasting, univariate and multivariate nonstationary time series, tests for unit roots, cointegration, autoregressive conditional heteroscedasticity models, time series models with changes in regime. Prerequisite: ECON 609.

Experimental methods of and design of computer-based experiments. Use of standard software for data collection in individual decision-making experiments and games.

The functions of laws, rules, customs, conventions, and other restrictions on economic and social activity. Theories of institutional evolution. Prerequisites: ECON-500 or ECON-601.

Techniques of microeconometric analysis to inform health policy. Topics include: demand for health, medical care, and insurance, risk selection, medical innovation.

Household production models and intra-household models of behavior and their empirical implementation, focus on poverty, human resource investments and their interaction with public policies. Prerequisites: ECON 501 and ECON 609.

General equilibrium theory applied to theory and practice of commercial policy, economic growth, and trade. Prerequisites: ECON-500 or ECON-601.

Think about and design empirical studies in economics using cutting-edge approaches to causal inference -- experiments, quasi-experiments, non-parametrics and semi-parametrics.

Current research in economic theory presented by faculty, students, and outside scholars. Graded CR/NC.

Current research in econometrics presented by faculty, students, and outside scholars. Graded CR/NC.

Current research in international, regional, and urban development economics presented by faculty, students, and outside scholars. Graded CR/NC.

Current research in applied microeconomics, macroeconomics, and public policy presented by faculty, students, and outside scholars. Graded CR/NC.

Topics in dynamic economics involving business fluctuations, economic growth and development, microeconomic adjustments and market mechanisms; related quantitative and qualitative methods; empirical research involving economic change. Graded CR/NC.

Presentations on current research in empirical microeconomics by outstanding scholars from leading Economics departments and faculty at USC. Open only to Economics Ph.D. students. Graded CR/NC.

Examination of various frontier research topics of economics through critical discussions of research papers that study the most recent economic research agendas.

Credit on acceptance of Dissertation. Graded CR/NC.

Credit on acceptance of Dissertation. Graded CR/NC.

Credit on acceptance of Dissertation. Graded CR/NC.

Credit on acceptance of Dissertation. Graded CR/NC.

Credit on acceptance of Dissertation. Graded CR/NC.