| source Caltech (X) |
level |
department Social Science (X) |
The application of theory from economics, political science, and demography to historical subjects, with an emphasis on questions of institutional change. The historical topics covered will depend upon the instructor. Not offered 2008–09.
Score: 11.52751 Details | Listing | Web page
For course description, see Business Economics and Management.
Score: 11.52751 Details | Listing | Web page
Reading in social science and related subjects, done either in connection with the regular courses or independently of any course, but under the direction of members of the department. A brief written report will usually be required. Graded pass/fail.
Score: 11.52751 Details | Listing | Web page
Not available for social science credit unless specifically approved by social science faculty. Instructors: Staff, visiting lecturers.
Score: 11.52751 Details | Listing | Web page
For course description, see Computation and Neural Systems.
Score: 11.52751 Details | Listing | Web page
For course description, see Economics.
Score: 11.52751 Details | Listing | Web page
For course description, see Economics.
Score: 11.52751 Details | Listing | Web page
For course description, see Political Science.
Score: 11.52751 Details | Listing | Web page
This course will survey the neural basis of social behavior, drawing on both theoretical and empirical approaches. Recent findings from cognitive neuroscience will be discussed, with an emphasis on data from humans. Topics will include motivation, emotion, theory of mind, social perception, and simulation. Not offered 2008–09.
Score: 11.52751 Details | Listing | Web page
Instructors: Staff, visiting lecturers.
Score: 11.52751 Details | Listing | Web page
This course covers the fundamentals of utility theory, game theory, and social choice theory. These basic theories are developed and illustrated with applications to electoral politics, market trading, bargaining, auctions, mechanism design and implementation, legislative and parliamentary voting and organization, public economics, industrial organization, and other topics in econom-ics and political science. Instructors: Echenique, Chambers, Palfrey.
Score: 11.52751 Details | Listing | Web page
This is a graduate course in the fundamentals of economics. Topics include comparative statics and maximization techniques, the neoclassical theory of consumption and production, general equilibrium theory and welfare economics, public goods and externalities, the economic consequences of asymmetric information and incomplete markets, and recursive methods with applications to labor economics and financial economics. Instructors: Border, Echenique, Ledyard.
Score: 11.52751 Details | Listing | Web page
This course explores how psychological facts and constructs can be used to inform models of limits on rationality, willpower and greed, to expand the scope of economic analysis. Topics include overconfidence, heuristics for statistical judgment, loss-aversion, hyperbolic discounting, optimal firm behavior when consumers are limited in rationality, behavioral game theory, behavioral finance, neuroeconomic dual-self models, and legal and welfare implications of rationality limits. Instructor: Camerer.
Score: 11.52751 Details | Listing | Web page
Mathematical theories of individual and social choice applied to problems of welfare economics and political decision making as well as to the construction of political economic processes consistent with stipulated ethical postulates, political platform formulation, the theory of political coalitions, and decision making in political organizations. Instructors: Mattozzi, Iaryczower, Yariv.
Score: 11.52751 Details | Listing | Web page
Advanced work in a specialized area of economic theory, with topics varying from year to year according to the interests of students. Instructors: Palfrey, Chambers.
Score: 11.52751 Details | Listing | Web page
A working seminar in which the tools of microeconomic theory are applied to the explanation of events and the evaluation of policy. Not offered 2008–09.
Score: 11.52751 Details | Listing | Web page
First term: asset pricing theory, statistical tests on historical data and evidence from financial markets experiments. Second term: financial econometrics, with emphasis on applications to risk management. Third term: general equilibrium foundations of asset and option pricing theory. Not offered 2008–09.
Score: 11.52751 Details | Listing | Web page
A policy problem or problems involving the legal system will be studied, using concepts from at least one social science discipline. Each offering will be taught by a law professor, alone or in conjunction with a member of the social science faculty. The topic will differ from term to term, so the course may be taken more than once. Selected undergraduates may enroll in this course with the permission of the instructor. Instructor: Spitzer.
Score: 11.52751 Details | Listing | Web page
Introduction to the use of multivariate and nonlinear methods in the social sciences. Instructors: Sherman, Staff.
Score: 11.52751 Details | Listing | Web page
A course in quantitative methods for second- and third-year social science graduate students. Instructors: Sherman, Matzkin.
Score: 11.52751 Details | Listing | Web page
There is a tension in modeling social science phenomena between making strong assumptions, which lead to descriptive or normative conclusions that are precise when the assumptions hold but invalid when they do not hold, and making weak assumptions, which lead to less precise conclusions but hold more generally. The preponderance of social science research to date takes the former approach. This course studies recent advances in the latter approach. The course will review the work of Manski on bounds identification and estimation and trace some of the developments in this line of research to the present. Various applications of the methodology will be considered, including applications to Stanford-9 test-score data and data on organic pollutants in the Love Canal. Not offered 2008–09.
Score: 11.52751 Details | Listing | Web page
The course covers issues of management and computation in the statistical analysis of large social science databases. Maximum likelihood and Bayesian estimation will be the focus. This includes a study of Markov Chain Monte Carlo (MCMC) methods. Substantive social science problems will be addressed by integrating programming, numerical optimization, and statistical methodology. Instructor: Katz.
Score: 11.52751 Details | Listing | Web page
Introduction to modern quantitative history. The tools of economic and political theory applied to problems of economic, social, and political development in a historical context. Second and third terms will be graded together. A pass/fail will be assigned in the second term and then changed to the appropriate letter grade at the end of the third term. Instructor: Rosenthal.
Score: 11.52751 Details | Listing | Web page
Provides a knowledge and understanding of developments in both the American past and in other parts of the world. Instructor: Rosenthal.
Score: 11.52751 Details | Listing | Web page
Introduction to techniques and methods used in research at the intersection of social and information sciences: aggregation of dispersed information and optimal allocation of resources through markets, networks, and other social systems; formation and off-equilibrium behavior of these systems; distributed cognition; related computational issues; aggregation, allocation, formation, and equilibration enhancements through technology—hardware and software, economic theory applied to the design of communication networks and computational systems; distributed information systems supporting economic activity. Instructors: EAS and HSS faculty.
Score: 11.52751 Details | Listing | Web page