UCL - Seminar in Financial Economics

[ECON2436]

[30h] 5 credits

Teacher(s): Céline Poilly

Language: French

Level: Second

Aims
Main themes
Content and teaching methods
Other information (prerequisite, evaluation (assessment methods), course materials recommended readings, ...)

Aims

At the end of the seminar, the student must have good knowledge about topics and techniques introduced during the seminar. In addition, the seminar will be the opportunity for the student to analyze, synthesize and criticize financial and macroeconomics research papers.

Main themes

The financial economics seminar seeks to analyze some concepts about finance and to emphasize its role on the macroeconomics analysis. In this seminar, several topics are reviewed: financial markets composition, term structure of the interest rate, portfolio choice, microstructure models, risk sharing. The introduction of these concepts is based on two main lines: definition from the financial analysis point of view and implications for macroeconomics analysis.

The first part of each seminar is aimed at introducing main concepts concerning a particular topic. In the second part of the seminar, the student discusses a research article proposed by the teacher and directly related to the topic. A general discussion in the class will help to highlight important questions and issues of the topic.

Content and teaching methods

The first part of the seminar gives a brief review of the financial markets composition and the key financial top-ics (assets rental rate, investment decisions).
The second part of the seminar introduces term structure of the interest rate, its theories and estimation methods. Then, this topic is introduced from a financial macroeconomics point of view, through structural models based on the optimization behavior of agents.
The third part of the seminar introduced theories of portfolio choice, risk measurement and trade-off between consumption of goods and assets. In addition, these topics will be viewed in close and open economy environ-ment in order to extend the analysis about macroeconomics implications.

Other information (prerequisite, evaluation (assessment methods), course materials recommended readings, ...)

Courses in finance and macroeconomics

Oral presentation and participation

Slides + books + research articles