Senior Seminar Descriptions

Fall 2026

Economics Senior Seminar Descriptions

Seminars listed below are only open to CC and GS undergraduate economics majors.

NOTE: All seminars will satisfy the FE major for this semester.

PLEASE NOTE: ALL PREREQUISITES (ECON UN3211, UN3213, UN3412) must be successfully completed before the seminar may be taken —not after and not concurrently, otherwise the seminar will not count towards the major. Check the CC/GS bulletin for all seminar prerequisites and details.

DAYS, TIMES and CLASSROOMS can be found on Vergil.

GU4911 (Sec. 1) MICROECONOMICS Seminar
Instructor: Sunil Gulati
Day/Time: Mon. 2:10pm – 4:00pm
Topic: Sports Economics
This seminar will focus on an economic analysis of the sports industry. Topics covered will include economics of sports leagues, the labor market for professional athletes, sports marketing and broadcasting, economic impact of teams & stadiums and antitrust policies. A number of guest speakers from the sports world (including the professional leagues and media industry) will be featured. One textbook and a number of separate readings will be assigned. Seminar students are expected to actively participate in class discussions, make an in class presentation of selected readings and of original work and write a term paper on an agreed upon topic.

GU4911 (Sec. 2) MICROECONOMICS Seminar
Instructor: Prajit Dutta
Day/Time: Mon. 4:10pm – 6:00pm
Topic: Economics of the Arts
The seminar will survey the art market. Readings will include exploration of the business model and common practices of for-profit art galleries and the primary and secondary markets for art sales. Art appraisals, auctions, art collectors and art as investment will be discussed in detail. Students will be required to attend an art auction.

GU4911 (Sec. 3) MICROECONOMICS Seminar
Instructor: Tri Vi Dang
Day/Time: Tues. 10:10am – 12:00pm
Topic: Private Equity & Hedge Fund Investing
This seminar course discusses the economics of professional asset management with special focus on private equity and hedge fund investing. The aim of this seminar is to provide the students with the analytical skills and conceptual frameworks necessary to significantly deepen their understanding of asset management. The first part of the course examines how private equity funds and hedge funds as the two most prominent alternative investment vehicles are raised and structured. The second part of the seminar discusses the deal making of private equity managers as well as various investment strategies of hedge fund managers.

GU4911 (Sec. 4) MICROECONOMICS Seminar
Instructor: Douglas Almond
Day/Time: Mon. 10:10am – 12:00pm
Topic: Environmental Economics
This seminar explores environmental economics and climate change mitigation from an applied-micro perspective.  Readings include natural experiment-based “reduced form” research papers that utilize the practical and persuasive applied econometric tools such as difference-in-differences and the regression discontinuity design, as advocated by the most recent Nobel laureates in economics  (Angrist, Card, Imbens).  This empirical thread will be complemented by discussion of conventional environmental econ topics/frameworks, including why unregulated markets lead to suboptimal environmental outcomes due to market failures such as externalities and public goods.  We will also discuss approaches for addressing market failures, including command-and-control style regulation, subsidies and taxes, pollution permits, and delineation of property rights.  Students will initiate an original research project that leverages a natural experiment to support causal statements and inference, essential to identifying effective policies to address pressing environmental challenges and climate change.

GU4911 (Sec. 5) MICROECONOMICS Seminar
Instructor: Waldo Ojeda
Day/Time: Tues. 10:10am – 12:00pm
Topic: Household and Real Estate Finance
Households make financial decisions every day as they borrow and invest throughout their lives. How they interact with financial institutions becomes a critical aspect of their welfare and the macroeconomy. In this seminar, we will study student loans, retirement, credit cards and the payment network, real estate investment analysis, residential and commercial real estate financing, and mortgage-backed securities. We will focus on housing financing since it is the dominant asset and liability on household balance sheets. Within each topic, we will discuss empirical research that uses applied econometric tools to expand our understanding of household and real estate finance decisions. Seminar students are expected to actively participate in class discussions, present a research paper in class, and write and give presentations on their term paper on an agreed-upon topic..

GU4911 (Sec. 6) MICROECONOMICS Seminar
Instructor: Neal Masia
Day/Time: Wed. 2:10pm – 4:00pm
Topic: Public Policy, Economics and the Healthcare Industry
The healthcare industry accounts for nearly 20% of GDP in the United States.  This seminar will explore the links between major public policy events – for instance, healthcare reform or recent Medicare and Medicaid changes – and the financial prospects and implications for various healthcare industry sectors.  Lectures will examine how current and potential public policy decisions impact the bottom line and the behavior of key industry sectors including pharmaceutical companies, hospitals, doctors, insurance companies, nursing homes, and others.  Each student will conduct research on an industry sector and a live public policy or regulatory issue of their choosing.  Students will be expected to use their quantitative and analytic toolkit to evaluate how a key government policy (or potential policy within the health reform context) is likely to affect the industry’s fortunes and behavior going forward, with implications for consumers, investors, and future policymakers.

GU4911 (Sec. 7) MICROECONOMICS Seminar
Instructor: Andrew Abere
Day/Time: Tues. 2:10pm – 4:00pm
Topic: Economic Analysis of Law
Economics is an essential tool for both understanding the rules we have (positive economics) and deciding what rules we should have (normative economics). A law is an obligation backed by a state penalty (such as payments to injured parties, fines imposed by the government, and incarceration). To an economist, these penalties look just like prices, and presumably people respond to penalties just like they respond to prices. People respond to higher (lower) prices for a good by consuming less (more) of that good. Do people respond to higher (lower) penalties for an activity by doing less (more) of that activity? For example, do people consume more marijuana when it is legalized? Do people drive less if there is congestion pricing?

GU4911 (Sec. 8) MICROECONOMICS Seminar
Instructor: Ingmar Nyman
Day/Time: Thurs. 10:10am – 12:00pm
Topic: Economics of Information
Information plays a key role in economic exchange. This course focuses on how economic relationships may suffer from some parties not having all the information that is relevant to their decision-making. We will see how these kinds of information asymmetries invite lying and cheating. We will also study how parties can structure their agreements to address the problems that such information asymmetries create.

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GU4913 (Sec. 1) MACROECONOMICS Seminar
Instructor: Gabriel Toledo
Day/Time: Wed. 4:10pm – 6:00pm
Topic: Macroeconomics of the Labor Market
This seminar examines the labor market from a macroeconomic perspective, combining rigorous theory with empirical evidence on employment, wages, and unemployment. Topics include the flow approach to labor market dynamics, equilibrium search and matching models, the cyclical behavior of unemployment and vacancies, wage determination and dispersion, the Phillips curve, the decline in the labor share, and emerging phenomena such as jobless recoveries, the Great Resignation, and the impact of automation and AI on employment. Special attention is paid to the tension between theory and data; why standard models struggle to account for observed volatility, and how recent work resolves these puzzles. Students develop original research papers on a labor market question of their choice, and present both existing papers in the literature and their own work-in-progress.

GU4913 (Sec. 2) MACROECONOMICS Seminar
Instructor: David Wiczer
Day/Time: Tues. 6:10pm – 8:00pm
Topic: The Macroeconomics of Social Insurance
This seminar examines the design, incentive effects, and macroeconomic implications of social insurance programs in the United States. Topics include unemployment insurance, disability insurance, and the countercyclical transfer programs deployed during recent recessions — including the economic impact payments and expanded UI of the COVID-19 era. Students will engage with both the microeconomic foundations of program design (moral hazard, adverse selection, consumption smoothing) and the broader macroeconomic questions of fiscal multipliers, automatic stabilizers, and the interaction of social insurance with labor market dynamics. Readings draw from public finance, labor economics, and macroeconomics.