This class covers the analysis and modeling of stochastic processes. Topics include measure theoretic probability, martingales, filtration, and stopping theorems, elements of large deviations theory, Brownian motion and reflected Brownian motion, stochastic integration and Ito calculus and functional limit theorems. In addition, the class will go over some applications to finance theory, insurance, queueing and inventory models.

This half-semester course introduces and surveys a selection of cutting-edge topics in the field of real estate finance and investments. The course follows an informal ‰ŰĎseminar‰Ű format to the maximum degree possible, with students expected to take considerable initiative. Lectures and discussions led by the instructors will be supplemented by several guest speakers from the real estate investment industry, who will present perspectives on current trends and important developments in the industry.

" In analyzing fiscal issues, conventional public finance approaches focus mainly on taxation and public spending. Policymakers and practitioners rarely explore solutions by examining the fundamental problem: the failure of interested parties to act collectively to internalize the positive externalities generated by public goods. Public finance is merely one of many possible institutional arrangements for assigning the rights and responsibilities to public goods consumption. This system is currently under stress because of the financial crisis. The first part of the class will focus on collective action and its connection with local public finance. The second part will explore alternative institutional arrangements for mediating collective action problems associated with the provision of local public goods. The objective of the seminar is to broaden the discussion of local public finance by incorporating collective action problems into the discourse. This inclusion aims at exploring alternative institutional arrangements for financing local public services in the face of severe economic downturn. Applications of emerging ideas to the provision of public health, education, and natural resource conservation will be discussed."

This course covers the key quantitative methods of finance: financial econometrics and statistical inference for financial applications; dynamic optimization; Monte Carlo simulation; stochastic (ItĺŞ) calculus. These techniques, along with their computer implementation, are covered in depth. Application areas include portfolio management, risk management, derivatives, and proprietary trading.

Develops facility with concepts, language, and analytical tools of economics. Covers microeconomics, macroeconomics, and international trade and payments. Emphasizes integration of theory, data, and judgment in the analysis of corporate decisions and public policy, and in the assessment of changing US and international business environments. Restricted to Sloan Fellows. The fact of scarcity forces individuals, firms, and societies to choose among alternative uses -- or allocations -- of its limited resources. Accordingly, the first part of this summer course seeks to understand how economists model the choice process of individual consumers and firms, and how markets work to coordinate these choices. It also examines how well markets perform this function using the economist's criterion of market efficiency. Overall, this course focuses on microeconomics, with some topics from macroeconomics and international trade. It emphasizes the integration of theory, data, and judgment in the analysis of corporate decisions and public policy, and in the assessment of changing U.S. and international business environments.

This text addresses financial planning concepts, their application and the risk factor in the management of finances. It is used in the Prince George's Community College course BMT 1620: Financial Planning and Investments, a course where students plan to increase their net worth by building a personal finance portfolio. Emphasis is on liquid asset management and investments such as stocks, bonds, personal property, etc. Additionally, students explore how financial planning impacts tax liability. Furthermore, students examine different types of insurance policies related to life, health, and home. Lastly, students study retirement planning and the components of estate planning.

Uses a case approach to develop a framework for business analysis. Provides students with tools for business analysis, including strategic, accounting, financial, and prospective analysis. Concepts are then applied to a number of decision-making contexts, such as credit analysis, investor communications, merger analysis, financial policy decisions, and securities analysis. From the Course Description: Course Description The purpose of this class is to advance your understanding of how to use financial information to value and analyze firms. We will apply your economics/accounting/finance skills to problems from today's business news to help us understand what is contained in financial reports, why firms report certain information, and how to be a sophisticated user of this information.

This is a course for those who are interested in the challenge posed by massive and persistent world poverty, and are hopeful that economists might have something useful to say about this challenge. The questions we will take up include: Is extreme poverty a thing of the past? What is economic life like when living under a dollar per day? Why do some countries grow fast and others fall further behind? Does growth help the poor? Are famines unavoidable? How can we end child labor - or should we? How do we make schools work for poor citizens? How do we deal with the disease burden? Is micro finance invaluable or overrated? Without property rights, is life destined to be "nasty, brutish and short"? Has globalization been good to the poor? Should we leave economic development to the market? Should we leave economic development to non-governmental organizations (NGOs)? Does foreign aid help or hinder? Where is the best place to intervene?

Introduction to the theory and application of large-scale dynamic programming. Markov decision processes. Dynamic programming algorithms. Simulation-based algorithms. Theory and algorithms for value function approximation. Policy search methods. Games. Applications in areas such as dynamic resource allocation, finance and queueing networks, among others.

This course emphasizes dynamic models of growth and development. Topics covered include: migration, modernization, and technological change; static and dynamic models of political economy; the dynamics of income distribution and institutional change; firm structure in developing countries; development, transparency, and functioning of financial markets; privatization; and banks and credit market institutions in emerging markets.

At MIT, this course was team taught by Prof. Robert Townsend, who taught for the first half of the semester, and Prof. Abhijit Banerjee, who taught during the second half. On OCW we are only including materials associated with sessions one through 13, which comprise the first half of the class.

" Topics include productivity effects of health, private and social returns to education, education quality, education policy and market equilibrium, gender discrimination, public finance, decision making within families, firms and contracts, technology, labor and migration, land, and the markets for credit and savings."

Discrete stochastic processes are essentially probabilistic systems that evolve in time via random changes occurring at discrete fixed or random intervals. This course aims to help students acquire both the mathematical principles and the intuition necessary to create, analyze, and understand insightful models for a broad range of these processes. The range of areas for which discrete stochastic-process models are useful is constantly expanding, and includes many applications in engineering, physics, biology, operations research and finance.

If you are an entrepreneur, one of your priorities, in addition to building your company, is ensuring you have enough money at the right times. Early Stage Capital will consider a broad range of questions that entrepreneurs deal with on this front, including the following: What should your strategy and your priorities be in raising early stage capital? What are the market norms and standards in structuring VC deals? What are the critical negotiating strategies and tactics? How will your company be valued? How can you obtain the optimal valuation for your new venture? What are the critical elements in the relationship between venture capitalists and entrepreneurs? How is the "venture model" evolving? Is it broken? What is the impact of Super Angels and micro VCs? These are key questions that face all entrepreneurs in 2010, particularly first-time entrepreneurs. This course aims to prepare you for these decisions, as either a potential entrepreneur or venture capitalist. Using live interactions with leading figures in the venture finance community, most of the class sessions will analyze fundamental strategies of the venture-capital investment process and the critical importance of the relationship between entrepreneur and investor. As well, we will have a tactical focus on demystifying the legalities and jargon of the term sheet and the "A round" financing process. Significantly for 2010, we will also frequently consider the rapid and arguably fundamental change in VC today as the "lean startup" model threatens much of the traditional role and value of the venture investor. Disclaimer: The websites for this course and the materials they offer are provided for educational use only. They are not a substitute for the advice of an attorney and no attorney-client relationship is created by using them. All materials are provided "as-is", without any express or implied warranties.

As markets or production bases, China and India are becoming important and integral players in the global economy. Foreign direct investment (FDI), portfolio investments and outsourcing businesses have increased dramatically in these two economies. Despite the rising importance of these two economies on the world stage, our knowledge and analysis of these two countries in an integrated manner has remained poor. The two are often lumped together by business analysts as "emerging markets," despite the substantial differences in their political systems, reform policies and business organizations. Academics, in contrast, have tended to treat two countries separately, preferring to specialize in issues and questions specific to one or the other country. The purpose of this course is to analyze these two countries within a coherent analytical framework. Our learning model is inductive, and heavily based on class discussions and participation. The group projects should aim at integrating analysis, knowledge and understanding of these two countries. We will also experiment with other forms of group projects, such as creating and working on business plans and those projects that integrate research from field trips with more traditional research, such as library research.

Entrepreneurial Finance examines the elements of entrepreneurial finance, focusing on technology-based start-up ventures and the early stages of company development. The course addresses key questions which challenge all entrepreneurs: how much money can and should be raised; when should it be raised and from whom; what is a reasonable valuation of the company; and how should funding, employment contracts and exit decisions be structured. It aims to prepare students for these decisions, both as entrepreneurs and venture capitalists. In addition, the course includes an in-depth analysis of the structure of the private equity industry.

The author's goals in writing Exploring Business were simple: (1) introduce students to business in an exciting way and (2) provide faculty with a fully developed teaching package that allows them to do the former. Toward those ends, the following features are included in this text:1- Integrated (Optional) Nike Case Study: A Nike case study is available for instructors who wish to introduce students to business using an exciting and integrated case. Through an in-depth study of a real company, students learn about the functional areas of business and how these areas fit together. Studying a dynamic organization on a real-time basis allows students to discover the challenges that it faces, and exposes them to critical issues affecting the business, such as globalization, ethics and social responsibility, product innovation, diversity, supply chain management, and e-business.2- A Progressive (Optional) Business Plan: Having students develop a business plan in the course introduces students to the excitement and challenges of starting a business and helps them discover how the functional areas of business interact. This textbook package includes an optionalintegrated business plan project modeled after one refined by the author and her teaching team over the past ten years.3- AACSB Emphasis: The text provides end-of-chapter questions, problems, and cases that ask students to do more than regurgitate information. Most require students to gather information, assess a situation, think about it critically, and reach a conclusion. Each chapter presents ten Questions and Problems as well as five cases on areas of skill and knowledge endorsed by AACSB: Learning on the Web, Career Opportunities, The Ethics Angle, Team-Building Skills, and The Global View. More than 70% of end-of-chapter items help students build skills in areas designated as critical by AACSB, including analytical skills, ethical awareness and reasoning abilities, multicultural understanding and globalization, use of information technology, and communications and team oriented skills. Each AACSB inspired exercise is identified by an AACSB tag and a note indicating the relevant skill area.4- Author-Written Instructor Manual (IM): For the past eleven years, Karen Collins has been developing, coordinating and teaching (to over 3,500 students) an Introduction to Business course. Sections of the course have been taught by a mix of permanent faculty, graduate students, and adjuncts.

This course introduces the core theory of modern financial economics and financial management, with a focus on capital markets and investments. Topics include functions of capital markets and financial intermediaries, asset valuation, fixed-income securities, common stocks, capital budgeting, diversification and portfolio selection, equilibrium pricing of risky assets, the theory of efficient markets, and an introduction to derivatives and options.

Continuation of Finance Theory I, concentrating on corporate financial management. Topics: Capital investment decisions, security issues, dividend policy, optimal capital structure, hedging and risk management, futures markets and real options analysis. The objective of this course is to learn the financial tools needed to make good business decisions. The course presents the basic insights of corporate finance theory, but emphasizes the application of theory to real business decisions. Each session involves class discussion, some centered on lectures and others around business cases.

Studies basic concepts of financial and managerial accounting. Viewpoint is that of the users of accounting information (especially managers) rather than the preparer (the accountant).

Introduction to investments and corporate finance. Topics include: project and company valuation, risk and return in capital markets, the pricing of stocks and bonds, corporate financing and dividend policy, the cost of capital, and financial options. Subject provides a broad overview of both theory and practice. Restricted to Management of Technology students. Financial Management studies corporate finance and capital markets, emphasizing the financial aspects of managerial decisions. It touches on all areas of finance, including the valuation of real and financial assets, risk management and financial derivatives, the trade-off between risk and expected return, and corporate financing and dividend policy. The course draws heavily on empirical research to help guide managerial decisions.