Economics with French BA

An independent research project, involving the application of techniques of economic analysis to a self-chosen research topic and the presentation of a written report. There will be lectures to provide general guidance on economic research methods and writing an undergraduate dissertation in economics.

Topics include:

• introduction to the dissertation
• types of dissertation
• literature reviews
• sources of data
• writing up your dissertation
• data entry and data management
• an introduction to STATA
• descriptive statistics
• practical issues in regression analysis
• model selection
• endogeneity bias

Following your time spent living in a French-speaking country this advanced module will be your final step towards fluency. We'll help you continue to improve your oral and written skills using a wide variety of texts.

Your grammar expertise and vocabulary shall be deepened through the production of linguistic commentary and summaries. In addition, we'll help you develop translation skills. Your French writing skills will improve immeasurably as we translate into and out of French creative writing in different registers.

This module adopts a broad focus on factors influencing growth and development, concentrating on core economic policy areas and the role of international organisations.

Topics covered include macroeconomic policies, in particular exchange rates and the role of the IMF; aid policy and the World Bank, effects of aid on growth, macroeconomic and fiscal policy, and poverty; trade policy and performance and the WTO; economic reforms and growth experiences in East Asia, China and Africa; human development and the UN Sustainable Development Goals.

This module generalises and builds upon the material covered in the Econometric Theory I and II. In the first part of the module, we study large sample, or asymptotic, theory. This is needed in order to obtain tractable results about the behaviour of estimators and tests when the standard modelling assumptions - which frequently cannot be verified in practice - are relaxed.

The second part of the module continues the time series analysis taken in Econometric Theory II, with the emphasis on the behaviour of typical economic time series, and the implications of that behaviour in practical analysis, such as the construction of models linking economic time series. The key issues addressed will be the identification of non-stationarity through the construction of formal tests and the implications for modelling with non-stationary data.

Particular attention will be paid to the contributions of Sir Clive Granger to the spurious regression problem and to cointegration analysis, for which he was ultimately awarded the Nobel Prize.

This module discusses aspects of some of the main sub-areas of experimental and behavioural economics. This includes applications related to individual decision-making, strategic behaviour and market behaviour.

The module encourages reflection on both the role of experiments in economics and the assumptions that economics does (and should) make about people’s motivations. Both experimental economics and behavioural economics are still comparatively new fields within the wider discipline.

The module considers their potential and main achievements, relative to more traditional economic techniques. It encourages development of critical skills and reflection on specific research contributions in experimental and behavioural economics.

This module covers:

• saving, focusing on how agents make intertemporal decisions about their savings and wealth accumulation
• saving puzzles and household portfolios, focusing on credit markets and credit markets' imperfections, and why do households hold different kinds of assets
• asset allocation and asset pricing, focusing on intertemporal portfolio selection, asset pricing and the equity premium puzzle
• bond markets and fixed income securities
• the term structure of interest rates
• the role of behavioural finance in explaining stock market puzzles

This module provides an advanced economic analysis of the theory of organisation of firms and industries. It will analyse a variety of market structures related to the degree of market competition with a special emphasis on imperfectly competitive markets. It will also analyse issues related to the internal organisation of firms.

This module looks at:

• trade policy
• economic policy for trade and international factor mobility
• theory and evidence
• trade policy and imperfect competition
• trade and distortions
• the political economy of protection
• trade policy reform

This module covers:

• models of intra-industry trade
• trade policy in oligopolistic industries
• multinational enterprises
• testing trade theories
• the WTO and "new issues"

This module covers an economic analysis of the labour market, with an emphasis on policy implications and institutional arrangements.

This module covers:

• dynamic general equilibrium models, focusing on how the time path of consumption, and saving, is determined by optimising agents and firms that interact on competitive markets
• growth in dynamic general equilibrium, focusing on the Solow model and the data, and the role played by accumulation of knowledge (endogenous innovation) in explaining long run growth
• Real Business Cycles (RBC), focusing on how the RBC approach accounts for business cycle fluctuations, and what links short run fluctuations and growth processes

This module is intended to provide an introduction to mathematical techniques used in economics. In particular, examples of economic issues that can be analysed using mathematical models will be discussed in detail.

Particular attention will be given to providing an intuitive understanding of the logic behind the formal results presented.

This module will cover topics in advanced microeconomics and decision theory. The precise content may vary from year to year, but the module will start from the basis established by the Microeconomic Theory module.

This module provides a rigorous introduction to formal models of money in the macroeconomy. Following this, applications for areas of central banking, finance and international macroeconomics will be explored.

This module covers: 

• Foundations:
  • The rational political individual?
  • Voter participation
  • Collective action and the role of the state
• Core Political Economy:
  • The economic approach to politics
  • Political aspects of economics: rights and the limits of the state
  • Political aspects of economics: inequality and the duties of the state
• Political Economy in Action:
  • Political economy in action: some current issues in political economy

The module will introduce some major themes of the economic analysis of government. Using the tools of modern microeconomic theory, it will explore how government institutions are designed, how they could be designed better, and how they shape economic policy. 

This module will study the different ways travel has been used and represented in contemporary French and Francophone texts, arts and films. From tourism to exploration, from exile to migration, from pilgrimage to business travel, we will question the tacit ideologies found in contemporary travel discourses. We will study more specifically how contemporary discourses of travel have been, or not, adapting themselves to a post-colonial awareness and how it has enabled travellers to represent travel differently. The importance of this field has been steadily growing in between disciplines that range from literary studies to ethnography. The module will use these cross-cultural influences to create an arena in which to develop connections between key disciplines and different forms of arts (literature, ethnography, films and photography).

This module will introduce you to economic policy analysis. It will focus on the role played by different institutional rules in shaping the behaviour of elected governments by providing incentives to elected governments.

This module will introduce students to economic policy analysis, using examples from environmental economics and international trade.  The first part of the module is about climate change. We first examine the practice of discounting future outcomes. We will look at the evidence for climate change in the past and predictions for future damage. Combining this with information about abatement options and costs, we can devise a globally optimal policy path, depending on the discount rate. Finally, we will trace actual climate change negotiations, evaluate climate change policy and examine why it is so difficult for countries to agree on greenhouse gas emission reductions. 

The second part of the module will focus on the issues around and methods for policy evaluation. We also draw some lessons for policy prescription/design. There is an increasing consensus as to the appropriate methods for evaluation but the topic of policy prescription remains contentious. It considers the main empirical methods of policy evaluation and the fundamental question of evaluation studies (what would have happened if the policy had not been undertaken). It discusses trade liberalization and exporting firms. This allows us to think about aggregate outcomes for policy change using evidence from microdata. It considers the question of whether there is systematic, reliable evidence that government policies stimulate growth in the long run and if so what those policies are. This topic is used to explore the issue of policy prescription.

This module will provide an introduction to international monetary issues, including the determination of exchange rates and international spill-over effects. 

This module explores how the Fifth Republic came into being and examines the problems of bedding in a regime that revolutionised French political culture without jettisoning the key features of the 'modèle républicain'.

We follow a chronological narrative of French politics between 1958 and 1969, and will also examine themes such as the ‘écriture de la constitution’, the clash of political visions and bipolarisation and its tensions. We conclude with de Gaulle's apparent act of 'political suicide' in 1969.

This module focuses on a range of econometric methods used in policy evaluation and in the identification and estimation of causal effects. Topics to be covered include:

• potential outcomes framework
• regression analysis and matching
• instrumental variables
• difference-in-differences
• regression discontinuity

This module covers the following:

Static numerical methods

• Numerical solution methods
• Numerical static optimisation methods
• Applications: resource allocation, computable general equilibrium

Dynamic numerical optimisation

• Discrete dynamic programming
• Implementation of the methods
• Applications: optimal growth, rational expectations, asset management

Agent-based economic modelling

• Foundations of agent-based modelling
• Basics of computer programming
• Applications: evolutionary games, markets   

This module is designed to introduce you to the study of various forms of artistic work in relation to the political and social background of the French Revolutionary decade (1789 - 1799). A variety of works will be studied (theatre, opera, song, iconography, painting) in order to consider the reflection of contemporary events, the notion of politically engaged arts, and questions of cultural administration (theatrical repertory, representation, censorship and privilege).

This module focuses on the theory and practice of two modes of audio-visual translation: subtitling and dubbing.

The linguistic, technical, and cultural theoretical underpinnings of subtitling and dubbing from French into English will be examined in detail, and students will be able to put the theory into practice using professional dedicated software.

This module looks at the various ways in which the novel has evolved and adapted to “the contemporary” by responding to the “everyday”. Giving an overview of the various approaches to the everyday in the contemporary novel from the 60s to the present, this module will explore how key authors negotiate, through their writing, the everyday’s indeterminacy and the unstable space it occupies between the social and the individual.