ECO_3F001_EP - Advanced Microeconomics (2024-2025)

This course builds on ECO201 to go beyond the competitive equilibrium setting and introduce new causes of market failures. We aim to study how the presence of incomplete and asymmetric information affects the standard analysis of microeconomic theory. The starting point is that asymmetric information leads to market failures, which opens the question of how to regulate and appropriately design markets to solve or reduce these failures. We will present the basics of two important theories and methods which have been the core of the modern microeconomic analysis since 1970: signaling games and mechanism design. The students will learn new tools to analyze markets and interactions in the presence of incomplete and asymmetric information. They will also learn how to develop policy tools and design markets that mitigate the issues induced by the information structure.

The mathematical treatment is rigorous, but not as much as for a graduate-level course. This course will be thus most useful as a preparation for formal graduate studies in economics.

ECO_3F002_EP - Advanced Macroeconomics (2024-2025)

Prerequisite: ECO202

This course will cover fluctuations, unemployment, economic crises, and macroeconomic stabilization policies through the lens of the “New Keynesian” model that has developed over that past couple of decades and now guides short-run macroeconomic analysis. After reviewing the building blocks of the short-run macroeconomic model (namely, aggregate demand and supply), we will cover conventional monetary and fiscal policies, and then turn to the unconventional policies that are put in place during “liquidity traps”, i.e. situations wherein conventional monetary policy is unable to efficiently restore aggregate demand (as is currently still the case in the euro area). We will occasionally look into the historical record - from the Great Depression to the Japanese experience, to the worldwide Great Recession - and structure the evidence by means of a simple macroeconomic model with price rigidities. We will discuss the effectiveness of unconventional monetary policies (forward guidance, quantitative easing), as well as the unconventional effects of fiscal policies, during liquidity traps. Finally, we will examine whether the current trap follows from a serious but temporary shock or reflects a “secular stagnation" episode of persistently low aggregate demand and growth.

 

Prerequisite

Intermediate Macroeconomics course (Bachelor, Year 2)

 

Readings

Main text: Edouard Challe, Macroeconomic Fluctuations and Policies, MIT Press, 2019

A complementary reading list of policy and accessible research papers will be provided in due time.

ECO_3S005_EP - Social and Environmental Responsability of Business (2024-2025)

Prerequisite: ECO201, ECO202

Ce cours présente l'économie de la responsabilité sociale des entreprises (RSE) et les facteurs qui incitent les entreprises, agissant sur une base volontaire, à intégrer des préoccupations sociales, environnementales et éthiques dans leurs activités économiques et leurs interactions avec leurs parties prenantes. Il se compose de deux parties. La première partie présente ce qu'est et n'est pas la RSE en économie, et la relation entre la RSE et le risque climatique. La deuxième partie développe la relation entre la RSE et la performance financière, et comment les entreprises réussissent à motiver leurs employés avec la RSE

Textbook:
❯ Corporate Environmentalism and Public Policy by Thomas P. Lyon & John W. Maxwell (Cambridge University Press)
❯ The Market for virtue: the potential and limits for CSR by David Vogel (Brookings institution press)

Evaluation: controle continu + examen final

L'examen final consiste à rédiger un rapport qui analyse un article de recherche scientifique portant sur les thématiques vues en cours. Ce rapport est préparé à la maison sur plusieurs semaines

ECO_3S007_EP - Introduction to Research Frontiers A (2024-2025)

This course introduces students to the research frontiers in economics. Each week, a researcher from the laboratory CREST would present a central topic of his/her research. Students are expected to see how researchers tackle problems using  the tools and concepts developed in economics. Topics include traditional microeconomics, macroeconomics, and econometrics, as well as recent interdisciplinary developments such as blockchain technology, and machine learning.

Together the ECO307 and ECO308 classes will consist of 8 two-hour lectures by Polytechnique economists presenting their own recent research work. 

For each course students should choose one of the presentations and submit a report on it. They should submit 2 reports if they take both ECO307 and ECO308 classes.
 
Here are some guidelines on the report. Each student should submit an individual report containing their own original ideas, i.e. copy-pasting or paraphrasing the presentation’s material will be penalized. The report should have 4 pages or fewer, and include (a) a summary of the presentation and (b) a discussion. The student may discuss how important the research question is and/or the contribution with respect to existing knowledge. They may criticize the methodology or the interpretation of the results. They may explain which recommendations for economic policy, if any, are supported by the findings. They may suggest some modifications or extensions of the research work. In some cases they might find connections with other presentations. (Students will be expected to do some but not all of this, and some presentations will lend themselves more naturally to one type of discussion than another).
 
Calendar :

April 6 Julien Combe
April 20 Guillaume Hollard
April 27 Yukio Koriyama
May, 4 Jean-Baptiste Michau
May 11 Isabelle Méjean
May 18 Georgy Lukyanov
May 25 Olivier Gossner
June 2 Pierre Boyer

ECO_3S008_EP - Introduction to Research Frontiers B (2024-2025)

This course introduces students to the research frontiers in economics. Each week, a researcher from the laboratory CREST would present a central topic of his/her research. Students are expected to see how researchers tackle problems using the tools and concepts developed in economics. Topics include traditional microeconomics, macroeconomics, and econometrics, as well as recent interdisciplinary developments such as blockchain technology, and machine learning.

Together the ECO307 and ECO308 classes will consist of 8 two-hour lectures by Polytechnique economists presenting their own recent research work. 
 
For each course students should choose one of the presentations and submit a report on it. They should submit 2 reports if they take both ECO307 and ECO308 classes.
 
Here are some guidelines on the report. Each student should submit an individual report containing their own original ideas, i.e. copy-pasting or paraphrasing the presentation’s material will be penalized. The report should have 4 pages or fewer, and include (a) a summary of the presentation and (b) a discussion. The student may discuss how important the research question is and/or the contribution with respect to existing knowledge. They may criticize the methodology or the interpretation of the results. They may explain which recommendations for economic policy, if any, are supported by the findings. They may suggest some modifications or extensions of the research work. In some cases they might find connections with other presentations. (Students will be expected to do some but not all of this, and some presentations will lend themselves more naturally to one type of discussion than another).
 
 
Calendar :

April 6 Julien Combe
April 20 Guillaume Hollard
April 27 Yukio Koriyama
May, 4 Jean-Baptiste Michau
May 11 Isabelle Méjean
May 18 Georgy Lukyanov
May 25 Olivier Gossner
June 2 Pierre Boyer

ECO_3S009_EP - Computational Economics (2024-2025)

This course is designed to provide economists with elements of modern scientific computing using the open-source Julia language. It covers several topics in numerical analysis and programming, and applies them to several economic modeling fields (dynamic programming, macro modeling, IO models). Special emphasis is given to performance and reproducibilty. Approximately half of the sessions will consist in hands-on tutorials.

ECO_3S051_EP - Economics of Block Chains (2024-2025)

The financial industry was until recently a very concentrated sector. This is becoming less and less true as a wave of innovations greatly lowers the barriers to entry and intensifies the degree of competition among providers of financial services. Disruptive technologies are being implemented at an increasing pace, leading to major changes in the realms of payments, lending and borrowing, insurance, wealth management, venture capital.
To understand this revolution, one needs to have a good grasp of technological innovations as well as of the economics of the financial sector. This course will introduce students to both dimensions, allowing them to identify how financial services can be improved with new approaches.
The course will put a strong emphasis on the blockchain protocol because of its disruptive potential, hopefully preparing the audience for the next wave of innovations. We will adopt a hands-on approach with the objective of enabling students to monitor transactions over Bitcoin’s blockchain

 

Reading list:

  • Acemoglu, Daron and Simon Johnson. (2007). “Disease and Development: The Effect of Life Expectancy on Economic Growth”, Journal of Political Economy, Vol 115(6), pp. 925-985.
  • Hoyt Bleakley (2010). “Malaria Eradication in the Americas: A Retrospective Analysis of Childhood Exposure.” American Economic Journal: Applied Economics, Vol. 2, pp.1-45.
  • Das Jishnu and Jeffrey Hammer (2014) "Quality of Primary Care in Low-Income Countries: Facts and Economics," Annual Review of Economics, Vol. 6 pp. 525-553.
  • Björkman Martina and Jakob Svensson (2009) “Power to the People: Evidence from a Randomized Field Experiment on Community-Based Monitoring in Uganda” The Quarterly Journal of Economics, Vol. 124(2) pp.735–769.

ECO_3S052_EP - Experiments in Economics (2024-2025)

Experiments are a great way to produce the kind of data required to answer specific economic questions. As a result, the use of experiments in economics has greatly increased over the last three decades. The class will provide a guided tour of noticeable experiments. Some standard experiments will be reproduced during the class and we will debate regarding the economic implications. Along the way, we will address important questions like what is a good descriptive model?, do results from the lab generalize to the field?, or can we predict what kind of experiments would scale up? Last, but not least, experiments are a great way to test and reconsider rationality assumptions often made in economics.